Dawn Hunter, a graduate student in art studio at the University of California, Davis, is the winner of the fifth annual Ellen Hansen Memorial Prize. The $1,000 prize was established in memory of a UC Davis student who was murdered while hiking in the Santa Cruz mountains in 1981. It is given annually to a UC Davis woman student for an original creative project that recognizes and encourages the bravery and independence of women. Hunter submitted a large-scale charcoal and pastel drawing depicting a flower blooming. Titled "Blossom," the drawing is part of a series titled "Emergence, The Heroic Maiden" that focus on creating a "colossus female presence." In a statement defining her objectives as an artist and how her project fits the theme, Hunter said she derived her inspiration from an investigation of the myth of Persephone. Intrigued with the "internal underworld" of American painter Thomas Hart Benton's portrait of Persephone, Hunter "began to make drawings of internal, imagined, adventurous spaces that one could experience if reduced to microscopic size, instead of the surface of voluptuous fantasy joy that Benton paints." Hunter uses the image of the bride for her series, and in "Blossom" the image is a horizontal wedding gown within the blossom, absent its owner. "My brides are not eagerly awaiting their bachelors," Hunter states. "They are giants, and such a size makes them resistant to control. They cannot be engulfed in one gaze. Their flesh is unavailable to examine. The garment surfaces act as a protective armor that prevents such contact." In her interpretation of the Persephone myth, Hunter regards the underworld as a feminine domain, "where I go willingly to escape the male gaze. I am attempting to see a female body through female eyes, and not the male." Other finalists in this year's competition, which attracted 38 entrants, were Jean Moje Hastings, Lynn Pieski and Cindy Santana. The jurors for the competition were UC Davis professors Gyongy Laky, environmental design; Sandra McPherson, English; Janet Papale, English; Cornelia Schulz, art; and Elizabeth Tallent, English. Also serving as jurors were Kiki Revoir, a student majoring in environmental design, and Wendy Schreiber, a graduate student in the teaching credential program.