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Donald
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"Space
Fragments on
Lunar Sup face"
won the
Michigan Water
Color Society's
top award.

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Watercolor Winner

Southfield artist Donald Mendelson's painting
garners top award in Michigan traveling exhibition.

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27903 Orchard Lake Rd. (NW corner of 12 Mile)
Farmington Hills

(248) 553-4220

Open 7 days a week

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23331 ORCHARD LAKE RD.
SOUTH OF 10 MILE RD.

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474-8024

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D

onald Mendelson defines
himself as a watercolor
painter but not in the tra-
ditional sense. He adds
compounds to give texture to his
images, which often appear as if oil
paints have been used.
That's what he did for Space
Fragments on Lunar Surface, a painting
which has won this year's Michigan
Water Color Society Award and is
touring the state as part of the
Michigan Water Color Society 54th
Annual Exhibition.
Other Jewish award winners include
Karen Halpern of Bloomfield Hills,
whose Adobe Afternoon captured the
Else Pederson Memorial Award, and
Deborah Friedman of West Bloomfield,
whose Coquina garnered the Dulcie
and Norman Rosenfeld Award.
The show, on view through Aug. 17
at the Alfred Berkowitz Gallery at the
University of Michigan-Dearborn, was
juried by Elizabeth Yarosz Ash of
Midwestern State University in Texas.
She selected 35 pieces to travel —
including the 10 award winners —
from the 65 works that made their
debut at the Meadow Brook Art
Gallery on the campus of Oakland
University in Rochester.
Mendelson, whose work recently has

been shown at Paint Creek
Center for the Arts in
Rochester and Gallery of
Art & Design and
Birmingham-Bloomfield Art
Center in Birmingham, has
divided his 33 professional
years between painting and
teaching at Oakland
Community College. He
combines archaic and mod-
ern concepts in his expres-
sionist renderings.
"In my art, I am explor-
ing the direct visual rela-
tionship between the primi-
tive world images of the
Aztec, Mayan and Oceanic
cultures with the very
sophisticated scientific world of our
computerized society," says
Mendelson, 60.
"I juxtapose these two worlds while
interweaving and fragmenting the
imagery. As I pay homage to the past
and present, images from their respec-
tive places in time interact to create a
new vision — the historical thread
that interweaves and interconnects all
of humanity."
Mendelson's interest in art devel-
oped while attending after-school pro-
grams established by Boys Clubs of
Detroit. On scholarship, he had a
mentor and money for supplies and
lessons as he also studied at Durfee

Donald
Mendelson:
"My paintings,
with bold col-
ors, are very
expressionistic.
I was very
influenced by
the German
Expressionists,
many of whom
were Jewish."

Intermediate and Cass Technical High
schools.
Scholarships also buttressed his work
at Wayne State University, where he
earned bachelor and master degrees
while employed as a mentor at the
Boys Clubs that helped him.
After devoting his early painterly
time to oils, Mendelson moved on to
watercolor renderings and decided that
designing an oil-like component
would add drama.
"In 1989, I received a Creative
Artist Grant from the Michigan
Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs
and developed the process that perme-
ates my work today," says Mendelson,
who has been represented in some 300

