In jurying the Cambridge Art Association’s 15th National Prize and Open Juried Show, Paul C. Ha, director of MIT’s LIST Visual Arts Center, culled through over 1100 entries from 400 artists located in 20 states. The end result is a high-level, should-see exhibition of 61 selected works, starting with Kate Holcomb Hale’s “No Cars Falling Down,” a mixed-media installation constructed of charcoal, paper, latex paint and vinyl that was awarded Best of Show.

Hale said the piece is “an investigation of edges — the edge of a sheet of paper, the corner of a room — and space.” She rejects the traditional boundaries of drawing. Hale explained, “My drawings contort, expand and spill onto walls, ceiling and floors. The result is material merging with architecture.”

“In the last couple of years, I have been working on a series called ‘The Clear Light,’ shot mainly with ‘infrared’ equipment, meaning digital cameras that have been modified to allow the red, green and blue sensors to record not only light in their respective wavelengths but also to admit infrared radiation,” Diaz explained. “In practical terms, the infrared factor makes some scenes that would otherwise have a short range of tones have much greater ones, with special effects like very dark skies.”

The scene in Somerville, Mass. photographer Tara Jones’ “Man and the Sea” happened “quite organically,” she said. “My husband and I were staying the weekend in Gloucester and the first morning we woke up a huge fog had rolled in. It was so beautiful and mysterious and a perfect morning for the New England coast line. I knew I had to get out there with my camera (a Canon 6D) and I knew I needed an ‘old time’ look for my subject. I convinced my husband to throw his Fedora hat on and adventure out with me to some cliffs off of the Gloucester coast.”

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