The two local artists who share the award for Best Visual Artist this year each have their own thing going in terms of media and subject matter: Jenn Hassin uses handmade paper that she meticulously rolls and piles onto surfaces until they roil with movement, reflecting on war and loss. Jennifer Balkan's painted portraits of women (often tatted and pierced) wearing animal noses and Groucho glasses are riffs on something surrealist/proto-feminist artist Claude Cahun said nearly 75 years ago: "Under this mask, another mask."
