Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 7, 1995                   TAG: 9503070089
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TOP EXHIBIT PRIZE WAS PLEASANT SURPRISE FOR PHOTOGRAPHER

"I was pretty sure a photograph would not win the 'Best in Show,' '' said Chichester, whose photograph, "Green Night, Covington" did just that.

Chichester's color photo of a wood frame house against a background of smokestacks was awarded the top prize Friday by Jack Cowart, deputy director and chief curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Cowart also selected the other 61 works from regional artists that make up the show, choosing from among some 400 entries. The City Art Show is located on the first floor of the Art Museum of Western Virginia, and runs through May 21.

Cowart said "Green Night" stuck out the first time he glanced at slides of all the entries. His first impression only intensified as he studied the slides more closely, he said.

Cowart saved his final decision for Friday, however, when he got his first look at the actual photograph, by then installed upon the museum wall.

"This photograph is controlled by the background," said Cowart, standing in front of it shortly after making his decision. "The idea of the little house with the white picket fence and the nacreous green, and you've got this kind of apocalyptic inferno. ... I thought it was very succinct."

Chichester, a free-lance writer and photographer, said he took the photograph one night while heading home to a Roanoke from a bed and breakfast in Bath County.

"I was struck by this kind of eerie evening scene. It's so bright, it's almost like daylight," said Chichester. "I've always found that area [Covington] interesting, because it seemed to have a factory with sort of a town sprinkled around it. It's just an eerie feeling coming through there at night."

Chichester, 36, said he did not intend to make a statement about the Westvaco Corp., whose bleached paperboard plant the smokestacks are a part of. He stressed that the photograph, in which he experimented with different filters that enhanced the colors, should be seen as "an interpretation" - not as a journalistic reproduction of the scene.

Chichester's photograph is one of several in the show. Also included are dozens of paintings, sculpture and a chair shaped like a giraffe. Subjects run from mountain landscapes to cookies, trains, violence and pure abstraction, but Cowart said the work in general was characterized by ability and intelligence.

"Once you got above a certain level," he said of the entries, "there was a whole bunch of people who were doing very skilled work. I thought there was a lot of depth in the community."

The 62 works that appear in the show were selected partly to show the range of the art he looked at in the slides, Cowart said. Of the works he chose for the show, "each one of them said something about the artist I imagined to be standing behind them. I was interested in these pieces," Cowart said. "I wanted to see them in the flesh."

In addition to Chichester's $500 "Best in Show" award, $200 "Awards of Excellence" were given Friday to Judy Bates, Jamie Nervo Cohan, David Dooley, Ben Flora and M.E. Plitt.

A "People's Choice Award" of $100 will be selected by visitors to the show.