FROM THE PRESIDENT - AKI KANO I am very happy to present the AAPL’s 94th Grand National Exhibition at the beautiful and historic Salmagundi Club! Congratulations to the very talented and accomplished artists in this exhibition. It’s been gratifying to help organize this GNE and continue AAPL’s almost 100-year-old tradition. In addition to the work involved in putting this show together, the past year has been exciting in general as we’ve embarked on a lot of new initiatives as we continue to evolve and grow. We’re thrilled to provide more opportunities for our member artists… Despite all the hardships and challenges, 2021 has been a productive and dynamic year for the AAPL. • The FIRST EVER Associates Members Only Online Exhibition - The support from our Associate Members is critical to AAPL, and we are delighted to provide this opportunity exclusively to Associate Members. This show can be viewed on our website, www.AAPLinc.org. • AAPL member artists judged the awards for our online shows - We have many accomplished artists in our ranks, and we're proud to have begun a tradition of tapping several to serve as judges for our online shows, including the AA Members’ Show and our annual Spring Members-Only online show open to Elected Artist Members and above. We plan to continue to select established member artists to judge our online shows in the future. • We donated two scholarships to ARC (Art Renewal Center) totaling $10,000 - This is the second year we have donated to ARC, but this year we increased our donation to $10,000. Daniel Zalla has won the Frank C. Wright Scholarship for $5K and Samuel Hoskins has won the AAPL Award for $5K. Our scholarship recipients’ excellent work is on display at this year’s show. • Our 2nd Annual Studio Auction Sale with Bidsquare earlier this summer was a success! Our appreciation goes to all the participating artists whose work attracted thousands of art lovers to the Studio Auction. Eight works sold to collectors in South Carolina, North Carolina, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Malaysia! • Have you seen our new Member Map? On AAPLinc.org is a Member Map where all members have their locations pinned. Artists or the type of work they do may be searched or zoom in to find other members in your area. Please try out the new search feature and find your pin. Over the past year we’ve had an average of 2,000 map views per month. • The FIRST EVER $300 and Less Sale on the www.AAPLinc.org - It has been gratifying to launch this unique opportunity to give artists and collectors the ability to purchase affordable artwork from leading realist artists in our member community. • Online demos created by members- We introduced a new initiative where member artists have created informative demos for the AAPL community. These demos can be found on our website. • New AAPL Board Members - Thanks to the blessing of Zoom, we have added several new board members from all over the country. (New board members have asterisks next to their names in the Board of Directors page). We improved our awards structure this year to give winners more substantial awards. This year, we have three tiers of awards plus merchandise awards. Thank you to the AAPL Board members who worked tirelessly to make this show possible especially Gary Eckhart the GNE Exhibition Chair. We are especially grateful to the loyal support from the organization’s members, award sponsors, patrons, and benefactors. Please enjoy this exhibition and don’t hesitate to reach out with any feedback on the 94th GNE. I’d love to hear from you at: aaplpres@gmail.com Sincerely, Aki Kano
3
