Carole Jayne, an enamel artist from Blountstown, Florida, took top honors over a very talented field of artists at TroyFest 2018 held Saturday and Sunday in downtown Troy.

As the recipient of the prestigious 2018 TroyFest “Best of Show” award, Carole Jayne received $1,000 and will be the featured artist at an exhibition at the Johnson Center for the Arts in Troy. The dates will be announced.

Carole Jayne is an award-winning artist whose work has been shown from San Francisco to Washington D.C. and from Minneapolis to Miami.

She laughingly said she could give some profound reason for settling into shows that are more local but, honestly, she’s just ready to stick closer to home.

“I was a looking at the map and looking for cities that have art shows and I found Troy,” she said. “This has been a very good show and great experience for me.”
Carole Jayne said she came to art in a round about way but soon realized that “law and order” was not for her and found her place in a more creative endeavor, enamel art.

“My great-grandfather was a sea captain,” she said. “He is the reason for my interest in Japan. He would bring home items that peaked my interest – salt cellars, things like that.”

The Japanese influence in evident in Carole Jayne’s enamel art.

“Enameling is the term which describes the process of firing glass onto a pure metal surface,” she said. “If a design is first laid onto the metal using thin wires or gold or sliver and the resulting channels are filled with the glass-like enamel, then the process is called cloisonné, meaning to separate off by itself.”
Carole Jayne often uses fine silver on copper or iron to create her designs.                         “I then mix the ground glass (enamel) with enough distilled water to dampen it and pack several glass grains deep into the wire partitions, dry it, fire it at 1650 and keep repeating the filling and firing process until I have achieved the desired result.”

Carole Jayne said enamels are timeless.

“Long after all of us are gone, buildings are laid to rest and civilizations crumbled, enamels will still be around as reminders of who we were in the time that we lived and total proof that, when all else is lost, only art remains.

“For me, that is more exciting than anything – to know that centuries from now someone could look at my work and wonder what I was thinking or what my world was like way back in the 21st century.”

The 2018 TroyFest Awards also honored the late Corley Chapman, who was a dedicated patron of the arts, and the late Jean Lake, Troy folk artist and former namesake of the Troy arts festival.

Kelly Olszyk was the winner of the Corley C. Chapman 1st Place Fine Arts Award and Glenda Rogers received the Chapman award for crafts. Both artists received $500.

The $500 Jean Lake Folk Art Award was presented to Marian Baker. The award is presented to an artist who is self-taught and whose original work evokes Southern heritage.

Merit awards were presented to Keith Newby, painting; Dawn Prietz, pottery; Virginia Smith, jewelry; Landon Fraker, graphics, drawing; Nichols Drivas, Jr., sculpture; Richard Atkins, functional traditional crafts; Shanlie Wolter, decorative traditional crafts; Katherine Michael, folk art; Jackie McQueen, most creative use of materials; Jinsheng Song, demonstrating artist; and Ronald Johnson, freshman exhibitor. All merit award recipients received $125.