2 SCULPTORS EARN YOUNG TALENT PRIZE

John Frame and Peter Shelton have won the County Museum of Art’s 1985 Young Talent Purchase Award. The two Los Angeles sculptors are winners of the 23rd annual event, which awards $3,000 to each recipient in exchange for a work of art to be selected for the museum’s permanent collection.

The announcement, made Sunday afternoon at a ceremony at Chaya Brasserie, put an end to the rampant speculation that typically accompanies the annual competition. Observers who wanted to read deep meaning into the selection found more answers in what the artists are not than in what they are.

Neither is a practitioner of the currently popular, critically controversial and furiously marketable Neo-Expressionism. Neither is an abstractionist. And neither is a painter--or a photographer, for that matter.

While this year’s awardees are both sculptors, they are gifted individuals who have fashioned distinctive niches for themselves.

Frame makes haunting tableaux of carved and painted wood. They put one in mind of everything from Medieval pageantry and Italian theater to American folk art. In his artworks, masked figures act out tragicomic dramas or simply exude an affecting aura of pathos.

The 34-year-old artist did his undergraduate work at San Diego State University and earned his MFA from the Claremont Graduate School. A winner of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he has also shown his work extensively. Exhibitions at the Arco Center for Visual and Art, the Palm Springs Desert Museum, the Municipal Art Gallery, UC Irvine and Janus Gallery are among his credits. Currently, his work is part of “Spectrum Los Angeles” in Berlin.

Shelton, also 34, is best known for engaging installations of cast metal and cement sculpture. A particularly memorable group, shown last year at L.A. Louver and the Malinda Wyatt Gallery in Venice, featured suspended forms related to parts of the human body. He has also built architectural constructions and worked with cast and lacquered fiberglass.

Shelton is a graduate of Pomona College and UCLA, and a three-time recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

His international exhibition record includes the Venice Biennale, the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Ulster Museum in Belfast and Artpark in Lewiston, N.Y., as well as local appearances.

The Young Talent Purchase Award is open to Los Angeles County residents under the age of 36. Winners are selected by Senior Curator of 20th-Century Art Maurice Tuchman, Curator Stephanie Barron and staff members Judi Freeman and Carol Eliel, working with a committee from the Modern and Contemporary Art Council. This year’s committee members, who reviewed submissions and visited 50 studios, are Bonnie Wilke, chairwoman, and Pam Runkel, Doris Redman, Judy Zeidler and Jane Glassman.