The Saginaw Charter Township Art In Public Places proudly held it's annual State of the Arts Exhibition 2016 on Sunday, April 24. This year's Best of Show Award went to Candice Grieve of Clinton Township. Awards were presented to all of the award winners. This juried exhibition awarded cash prizes totaling $4,575. Food was provided by the Patisserie and music was provided by the Heritage High School Quartet. 
The Art Juror for this year's Exhibition is Jay Constantine, born in Cleveland, Ohio and received a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA from Northern Illinois University. After briefly living in Chicago Jay moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan to take a full time teaching position at Kendall College of Art and Design. As a full professor of painting, he has taught at Kendall for 33 years. He was chair of the Kendall Fine Art Program and the Painting Program for a decade. As chair, Jay was instrumental in creating the undergraduate painting major and the MFA in Painting.
Recently, Professor Constantine has shown at Brenda Taylor Gallery in the Chelsea Gallery district in New York and at Woodward Gallery in New York City. The show at Woodward Gallery was reviewed in artlog and artbeat. Also, his work was reproduced in the fall 2012 Direct Art Magazine vol. 19 published by Barnes and Noble.
Professor Constantine has received grants from Arts Midwest/Regional NEA, Art Serve Michigan, the Michigan Council for the Arts, the Arts Foundation of Michigan and served as an Artist -in-Residence at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art. Jay is also included in the NEA Artist Fellowship Archive at the Smithsonian Institute. He has had solo shows at many museums, art centers, alternative spaces and commercial galleries. His work is included in public collections such as the Grand Valley State University permanent collection, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Kalamazoo Institute of Art and Pratt Graphics Center as well as private collections.
This year's State of the Arts Exhibition is underwritten by: W.L. Case & Company; Bierlein Companies; Consumers Energy; Open Arms, Inc.; Rehmann; Morley Companies, Inc.; Spicer Group; Wolgast Corporation; Masud, Patterson, Schutter, Peters & Vary, PC; Mahlberg, Brandt, Gilbert & Thompson, PC; McDonald Pontiac/Cadillac GMC, Inc.; First State Bank; and Covenant Health Care Hospital.
The art exhibit will be shown at the Saginaw Charter Township Hall, 4980 Shattuck Road, Saginaw, Michigan, during business hours Monday - Friday, 8:00 am - 5:00 p.m., April 24 through May 27, 2015.