Meet the Judges

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Dort De Wild

Dort De Wild is a retired art teacher who taught at Waupaca Middle School in Wisconsin, for 31 years. She displayed the work of her students at the annual Waupaca Art Show for 20 years. 

De Wild is a chartered member of the Waupaca Area Public Library Exhibit Room Committee. This space is used to provide cultural, historical, and educational displays free to the public. The exhibits showcase local artistry, industry, memorabilia, and education. 

Since retiring in 2015, De Wild enjoys working in ceramics and painting with acrylics. In ceramics, she attempts to incorporate clay and metal in integral, organic, wall compositions. Other clay endeavors are explorations into color and abstract shapes. 

Her acrylic paintings also explore color and shape. Circles find their way into the paintings, representing cyclic movement and the life cycle. The single swirl — starting in the center and moving outward — symbolizes expanding creativity and growth of spirit. Those are traits she strives to incorporate into her own life. De Wild has been commissioned to paint three murals, which can be found in downtown Waupaca. 

Diane Sulg

Diane Sulg is the executive director of CRAFT (Craft Retailers and Artists for Tomorrow), a nonprofit trade association dedicated to the vitality of the handmade American craft industry. She is also the founder of American Craft Week, an annual, national celebration of handmade craft. 

Sulg was the founding director of Quad City Arts, a regional arts council serving 32 communities in western Iowa and eastern Illinois. There she founded and directed the Quad City Festival of Trees — now in its 35th year of celebrating and contributing to the cultural vitality of the region. 

After moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, Sulg and her husband opened Maddi’s Gallery, a handcrafted gallery specializing in fine American craft, handmade jewelry, and Southern folk art. In 2009, Maddi’s was named the Top Retailer of American Craft in the United States by Niche Magazine. 

She exercises her own creative energy by writing HeARTbeat for Sunshine Artist. It features artists who have created successful, art-based businesses. During the pandemic, she has used her time at home to begin painting, primarily semi-abstract botanicals. She has concluded she is a color addict and is in love with paint! 

Colleen Zietlow

Colleen Zietlow is a retired high school and middle school art teacher after 20-plus years. She is also a freelance artist. Her passion is talking to anyone who will listen about anything art. 

Her favorite ways to express herself artistically are through painting and drawing. She is most drawn to landscape painting where water is featured in some way and people become part of the scenery. 

Students played a huge role in encouraging Zietlow to place her artwork in competitions. Sax Arts and Crafts bought the first painting she put in a show. It was featured on the cover of their sales catalog for artists and art teachers throughout the country. 

Arts for the Parks selected two of her paintings for its Top 100 Artworks. When she moved to Waupaca, Wisconsin, and put her work in a show there, one of her paintings was awarded Best of Show and purchased by the community’s largest employer for its collection. She has artwork in several corporate and private collections throughout the country and is getting ready to tackle the gallery scene with her work. 

Brad Foster

Brad Foster is an artist, illustrator, and cartoonist who lives to draw and draws to live. His incredibly detailed pen and ink drawings, on both serious and humorous subjects, have been referred to as “Elegant Whimsy,” and he is fine with that. 

Foster has been selling his work in juried art festivals all over for the country for going on 31 years. He loves talking to people about making art and sharing his own artwork with all that he can. 

He also does the goofy “Funny Business of Art” cartoon for Sunshine Artist to give his fellow festival artists a grin about this strange business they are all in!