The University of South Carolina Beaufort will conduct its 2014 Emerging Artists Competition on Friday, Nov. 7 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Center for the Arts on the Beaufort Campus.

High school juniors and seniors from public and private secondary schools throughout South Carolina and neighboring counties in Georgia and North Carolina have been invited to submit works of art for consideration by a panel of judges drawn from the university’s faculty in the Studio Art program. The works may represent painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, ceramics and media arts.

This will be the fourth annual competition for young artists throughout the region. In previous years, more than 100 entries were submitted, 40 of which were accepted for consideration.

This year’s panel of judges consists of Lisa Victoria Ciresi, Ph.D., associate professor of the History of Art and coordinator of the annual competition. She is aided by fellow judges Brian Glaze, M.F.A., assistant professor of Art and coordinator of the Studio Art program at USCB; Christopher Maraffi, assistant professor of Media Arts and USCB’s newest hire for the program, and Eliot Joanna Angell, M.F.A., instructor.

The day’s events will begin at 10 a.m. when the young artists arrive on campus. For the next hour, they may tour the Sea Islands Center Gallery on Carteret Street, where many of their submitted artworks are on display, as well as the university’s facilities for the Studio Art program and the Center for the Arts, both located on USCB’s Beaufort campus. Lunch outdoors will follow at noon.

Topher Maraffi will deliver the keynote address. An artist-animator, educator and technical author, Maraffi’s research interests involve computational performatology, an arts approach to designing performative embodied agents for procedural character animation.

“We created this event as a means of encouraging emerging artists to pursue the arts in the hope that they will come to a university with a program in art and be able to excel with the proper direction,” Dr. Ciresi says. “It’s also a big recruitment opportunity for us. It raises awareness of the university, of the Studio Art degree program, and the fact that we have a significant amount of scholarship funds to offer deserving students.”

The panel of judges will select the top three emerging artists. The first-place winner will receive a $3,000 scholarship; the second place winner will earn a $2,000 scholarship, and the third place winner will be eligible for a $1,000 scholarship. All awards are contingent upon successful completion of the USCB application process, declaring a major in studio art, and maintaining a certain grade point average. Every student whose work is accepted into the show will receive a $500 renewal scholarship; all awards are subject to the same criteria.