New artists made a big splash at the 20th annual Southeast Open Judged Art Exhibit which was unveiled Friday evening.

Alyssa Reimer is the Community Arts Coordinator for the Steinbach Arts Council. She says the Southeast Open Judged Art Exhibit is a great place for new artists to show off their work publicly for the first time and this year a number of new artists were awarded.

Community comes to support local artists"We often see some of our more established artists come in and because they have been doing this for a long time, they are the ones that tend to take the prizes so it is really quite something to see this many new artists come in and take these prizes. It shows that there is actually quite a bit of art going on in our community that is of a high calibre."

Reimer says new artist Kianna Giesbrecht won first place in the adult acrylics category and Don Woroniuk won the adult crafted art category. She says in total there were 84 juvenile entries and 38 adult entries. She adds the Steinbach Cultural Arts Centre was filled with people supporting the many local artists Friday evening.

"It is really great to see the community come out to support their local artists. Sometimes it is their first shot at exhibiting their work and see what that is like to see other people admiring their work and getting that gratification and that validation that what they make is great so we like to see that."

All 122 entries will be on display in the Steinbach Cultural Arts Centre until April 5th, 2018.

The artists from the Southeast Open Judged Exhibit take the stage