''It's my childhood home, which was in Houston, Tex.,'' Christina Pettersson says of You Can't Save Everything, the wisp-streaming image of a house she submitted to The Miami Herald's Art Basel art contest. ``The first family home that I lived in. And it's dissolving. The idea is the way that memory is erased over time and disappears. It's from a series of dreamscapes that I've done.''

A New World School of the Arts graduate, Pettersson earns an A+ in the online competition that drew 1,273 entries. The contest's judges -- South Florida collectors Craig Robins, Dennis Scholl and Cricket Taplin -- were asked to pick two winners each, and Pettersson's graphite-on-paper work was tapped twice. ''My mother had me in art lessons when I was 6,'' Pettersson says. ``She was really fortuitous.''

Other winners:

• Monica Gorski of Pembroke Pines graduated in the spring from Florida Atlantic University with a degree in graphic design and printmaking. She had spent her junior year in Florence studying traditional printmaking methods, but within that context ''I like to take an experimental approach.'' Her winning intaglio Petunia (''after the pet name my grandmother used to call me'') is ``part of a series dealing with my curiosity about life and death and spirituality. For me, the figures are trudging through sort of a dark after-life world.''

• Lisa Kaplowitz, an M.F.A. candidate and instructor at the University of Miami, picked up her first camera as a member of her high-school photo club. Baker Boys, her winning entry, is from a series of photographs examining the character of small shopkeepers. The image focuses on the manager of a bakery in Ocean Grove, N.J. ''It's the end of the day basically,'' Kaplowitz says. ``You can see that by the cakes that have been eaten. . . . The visits I make are unexpected. This way the shopkeepers don't have time to change their appearance. I really catch them exactly how they are.''

• Zuleika Lopez failed to submit contact information with Legs Up, her winning whimsical photograph of a poinciana tree, but Dennis Scholl, who picked it, liked its ``eerie, Alice in Wonderland quality, where the tree appears to act as a person wearing a pair of tights. One loses all sense of perspective when looking at it.''

• Ellie Schneiderman, who created the intricate patterns of Black and White Covered Vessel by carving through the piece's cobalt underglaze to the white stoneware below, is a South Florida art-community stalwart whose involvement with establishing a variety of centers for artists -- remember Coconut Grove's old Grove House on Main Highway? -- stretches back decades. Schneiderman lives in Coral Gables with floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall art, and '40 artists' work in my garden. New Times called my house the Addams Family house.''

-- MARGARIA FICHTNER

Join the discussion

The Miami Herald is pleased to provide this opportunity to share information, experiences and observations about what's in the news. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We encourage lively, open debate on the issues of the day, and ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point. In order to post comments, you must be a registered user of MiamiHerald.com. Your username will show along with the comments you post. Thank you for taking the time to offer your thoughts.

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.repliedToText@

@Nyx.replyAnswerText@

Reply to this Comment @Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@