The School of Art and Design made its yearly transformation into an art studio when makeshift galleries in the Allyn Building housed the art work of 13 finalists in the 24th annual Rickert-Ziebold student art competition Sunday.

The students were competing for a prize of $20,000, which is one of the largest college-level art and design awards in the nation.

The Rickert-Ziebold competition is open to graduating seniors in the School of Art and Design. The finalists were chosen from a pool of more than 25 entries.

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The hopefuls presented their work on slides to the panel of judges that is made up of School of Art and Design faculty.

The winners of the competition were announced 3:30 p.m. in the first floor hallway of the Allyn Building. Kirk Louis Williams and Greg Gehner with metal smithing and Eva Lubenova Nikolova with printmaking were chosen as winners and split the $20,000 purse.

In the past two years there has been four winners $5,000 for each winner. The year before artists walked away with a little more than $3,000 each.

Faculty judge Bill Boysen, a professor in art and design, said the final decision is always a hard decision.

It never gets easy, especially when you get a body of good work, he said.

But faculty judge Kay Zivkovich, assistant professor in visual communication, said the small number of finalists made judging easier than last year.

When there are fewer people exhibiting, the top half of the work is much more obvious, she said.

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Each judge has more than one vote. The votes were cast for all of the presentations the judges felt should be winners.

Once tallied, the presentation or presentations with the highest number of votes are designated winners.

The prize money is not the only thing that makes the competition great but quality of work presented as well, chairwoman Karen Johnston said. Both of these things combine to make the Rickert-Ziebold competition highly prestigious.

The judges chose the finalists by the strength of the pieces and the best represented work of the various departments. This was a decision Johnston calls a formidable task.

It was a very strong group of competitors, Johnston said. The only thing harder is going to be voting on a winner.

The strength of the individual pieces was the final criteria of judging.

The work displayed demonstrated a variety of diverse styles, complex designs and quality craftsmanship.

The 13 finalists represented the areas of painting, metal smithing, industrial design, fiber art and visual communications.

Two groups of work shared one gallery. The pieces ranged from 4-foot-high working pieces to hand crafted jewelry housed in glass cases.

Chris Ahart, painter and finalist from Waukegan, has been working on his contribution to the show for one year.

Ahart, who started out at SIUC as an engineering student, began painting three years ago in a studio in the School of Art and Design.

It is a honor to be one of 13 finalists out of 27 applicants. I have always wanted to be in the show, but it wasn’t until a year ago that I felt my work was strong enough, he said.

Ahart said he received his confidence from a piece he created last year. He was not worried about winning the monetary award because just being in the art show was a feather in his cap.

Greg Gehner, metal smith finalist from Mount Olive, said it was nice to see his work in the pristine environment of the gallery. He said it felt good to be in the show but winning was not something you can expect.

It’s nice to see my work in a clean setting, I’m used to seeing it in a dirty shop. he said. I always saw myself in the show, but winning in such strict competition is not something you count on.