Art Professor Babette Mayor has received the Donna Lamb Bowyer Purchase Award for her art work titled “Ice Cream.”

The digital print and colored pencil artwork was exhibited in the Delta National Small Prints Exhibition at Arkansas State University’s Bradbury Gallery. Only 55 works were selected from more than 600 entries. 

Lyle W. Williams, the curator of prints and drawings at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio and the juror who selected the prizewinners for the exhibition, said many art connoisseurs were reluctant to accept digital printmaking when it first came on the scene.

“One reason for this is because so many early digital prints were so wrapped up in the process – the novelty of making digital prints – that content was dull at best and non-existent at worst,” Williams said. “‘Ice Cream’ shows how far the medium has come.

The Delta National Small Prints Exhibition, which runs through Feb. 28, was founded in 1996 and has become one of the foremost competitions for prints. Each year, an expert printmaker is invited to select the artwork for the show and judge which ones will receive awards. “Purchase” prizewinners become part of the Arkansas State Permanent Collection of Art.