Jurors

PJ Lynch has worked as a Children’s Book Illustrator since leaving Brighton College of Art in England in 1984.
He has won many awards including the Mother Goose Award, the Christopher Medal three times, and the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal on two occasions , first for “The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey” by Susan Wojciechowski, and again for “When “Jessie Came Across the Sea”” by Amy Hest.
“The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey”” has sold more than a million copies in the United States alone, and has recently been made into a motion picture starring Tom Berenger and Joely Richardson.
In recent years PJ has been commissioned to design posters for Opera Ireland and the Abbey Theatre.
He has also designed several sets of stamps for An Post (the Irish Postal service), including four Christmas issues.
In 2006 PJ completed work on two large scale murals in oils on the theme of “”Gulliver’s Travel’s”” for the new Cavan County Library.
PJ Lynch has lectured on his own work, and on Art and Illustration at the National Gallery of Ireland, The National Library of Ireland and at the National Print Museum of Ireland, as well as at numerous conferences and colleges across the U.S.
He lives in Dublin with his wife and their three young children.

John Sollinger is an artist and educator, based in Ashland, Oregon, USA. He earned a BS in Forestry in 1977, a PhD in Genetics in 1995, and was awarded two post-doctoral fellowships to study plant genetics. Since then he has been a biology professor whose passion for investigating the regulation of patterns in nature has spilled over into a passion for mosaicking those patterns. With stained glass pieces arranged chaotically, he produces mosaic wall-hangings that portray fire or water in realistic-to-impressionistic, oftentimes mysterious landscapes of Western USA. Solly devised his own methods, including a double reverse technique, through trial-and-error — and perseverance. His techniques developed in isolation, and his visual vocabulary was sculpted by observational biology. Solly has earned major awards in international, mosaic-specific and all-media competitions. He presents at mosaic conferences and offers workshops at home and overseas. In USA his mosaics have been featured in popular press, coffee-table books, trade journals, art magazines and advertisements for art organizations and competitions.