The Ribbon Winners from the 2025 President's Art Show

The paintings are painted, the installations are installed, and the judges have judged, and we (almost) have a full slate of award winners from the 31st annual President's Art Show.

We say "almost," because this year there's an additional accolade, the City Weekly Talk of the Town Award, and the judges haven't judged yet. Because you're the judges. The award is an audience-choice affair, with everyone who visits the exhibit getting a vote. To vote, visit PAS25 at the South City Campus Multipurpose Room, scan the QR code posted at the entrance, and choose your favorite piece. The award will be announced after the show closes on November 19.

In the meantime, here are the current ribbon holders, including comments from the judges explaining why they chose these pieces.

Oil painting. A blue surface of water with a single yellow leaf floating on it. Ripples from the leaf are colliding with another set of ripples from something just out of frame to the left. The black reflections of bare branches are distorted across the ripple's surfaces. The style is realistic.

President's Award

Shelly Coleman
Converging Ripples, 2025
Oil on canvas 20 x 20 inches / 50.8 x 50.8 cm

"The ripples radiating from single points in this painting remind me how our own actions can expand to affect others and have an impact on the world around us. I also admire that, in the center of the chaos caused by the intersecting, overlapping ripples, there's a calmness to the leaf."
Greg Peterson, President of SLCC

Oil painting. A fruit stall in a bustling public market. Bananas, oranges, lemons, mangos, and other fruit are piled on a table, anchoring the center bottom of the canvas. The upper canvas is a background of bright green walls interrupted by insistent signage and people. The brush strokes are chunky and suggestive, and the colors are vibrant with lots of high contrast.

Community Award

Mercedes Nok Yi Ng
Fruit Stall at Mong Kok, 2025
Oil on canvas
24 x 24 inches / 61 x 61 cm

"It's celebrating the art of the everyday, and how people who aren't trained artists can make their everyday work beautiful. It's the small moments of joy that I try to find in my life, and I really appreciate in art."
Lizzy Karp, award-winning film and podcast producer and Utah grants manager for The Kahlert Foundation

Photograph. A sculpture that resembles a seashell in off-white color tones stained with washed-out browns and light blue-green tints on the outer edges. The sculpture is suspended by a single golden wire. The background is white with subtle shadow gradients.

3rd Place

Jessica Booth
Harbor, 2025
Paper and wire
34 x 13 x 11 inches / 86.4 x 33.1 x 28 cm

"As I stepped into this room full of this wonderful art, I was immediately drawn to Jessica Booth's 'Harbor' piece. The juxtaposition between the organic paper and the industrial wire really made the piece special for me — the way it plays together, and the way that the paper was molded and flowed into its form to create something organic."
Luis Novoa, muralist and executive director at Artes de México en Utah

2nd Place

Jack Hattaway
The Lady Eve, 2025
Image drawn and composed in vector software, printed, cut into strips, then woven
28 x 23 inches / 71.2 x 58.5 cm

"One of the pieces that Jeff and Luis and I all agreed upon immediately was this woven paper portrait of a woman. It's phenomenal, really thinking in terms of layering and subject matter, but pushing material as a medium. Really inspiring."
Shalee Cooper, multidisciplinary artist and director and curator at Modern West

Oil painting. A surrealist tableau of a figure seated in a desert. The figure features the blocky and scrolling shapes of Aztec or Mayan stone sculpture and is wearing a goggle headset connected to a glowing cord that disappears off the top of the canvas. Behind the figure, paramilitary police are beating a man in civilian clothing. The far background depicts a destroyed cityscape, burning and smoking.

Best in Show

Arash Shoveiri
Absurd Euphoria, 2024
Oil on canvas
60 x 48 inches / 152.4 x 122 cm

"We came upon 'Absurd Euphoria,' and immediately we all knew that we'd found our winner. This guy is sitting there in the midst of what looks like armed police arresting someone, what looks like just all sorts of slices of life, modern life, life today. He is wearing a set of 3D goggles that are connected to a cable that goes up and disappears into the sky, and he's watching some sort of distraction that's just making him grin. And that title just about says it all, because if you think about it, every time someone throws a party, goes to a movie, gets drunk, and they're not paying any attention to the politics and the environment and all of the other things — there's reason to believe we might not make it through the coming days. He's grinning like an idiot, and then we have to ask ourselves: Are we any better?"
Geoff Wichert, contributing editor at Artists of Utah Magazine, 15 Bytes

Photograph. Four American Indian women wearing brightly colored and tasseled dresses and standing in a line facing away from the camera. The women are holding hands, creating a striking symmetry in the center of the photograph. Bright white salt flats stretch to the horizon, just below the centerline of the photograph, and the distant background is brown and purple mountains beneath a blue sky with well-defined cumulus clouds.

Jury's Choice Award

Eugene Tapahe
Eternal Legacy, 2024
Digital photograph, pigment inks on archival watercolor paper
Ed. 3/5
38 x 56 inches / 96.6 x 142.3 cm

The Jury's Choice Award is given to the piece that received the highest composite score from the selection jury, so we don't have a judge's assessment to publish for this piece — and frankly, it's so spectacular that we think it speaks for itself.

Tagged: Events , Galleries , Presidents Art Show