Ten Bay Area artists showed off their work at SF Weekly's Artopia event last night at the Project One gallery in hopes of winning a $2,500 grant as part of our annual Masterminds contest. Unfortunately, we couldn't give all 10 grants -- our esteemed panel of judges from the editorial department could only pick three. It wasn't easy. I think everyone who came to the event saw what a strong group of artists were competing for that money.

In the end, we wanted to pick one representative from each of the three categories: film/video/media art; fashion/design; visual art. With all that in mind, here are this year's winners (after the jump):

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

A huge, blackish, embroidered koi pond; a manzanita-branch-based sculpture; and a couple of psychedelic battle pillows inhabit the truly strange world of Anastasia Winter Schipani's art.

The longtime local and San Francisco Art Institute alum is obsessed with matadors and bulls and their death fights -- not too ladylike. Yet her work is often sewn or even worn, and nothing says "girl ghetto" like cotton batting and shiny thread. Thus Schipani holds a weird place in any art context, and we like that. Particularly amazing are her large-scale tapestries, which draw from the wall-hanging traditions of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, but which are pointedly modern in theme.

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

Do any serious artists do still-lifes anymore? The answer is yes. Our proof: Juliette Tinnus. But the photographer applies clever twists to the old genre.

In some of her works, she combines objects that wouldn't ordinarily go together, such as tree branches decorated with Post-Its and a bullhorn covered by a leg warmer. In others, Tinnus uses old-fashioned material to make a visual counterpoint: One photo depicts what looks like a classic tabletop still-life except a crocheted fabric reads, www.unbeli3veable_br3asts.com. "In a world dominated by technology," she says, "I feel inspired to return to handmade methods."

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

We knew we'd like Katie Bush when we read her letter to us saying that "her art vagina hurts" after having spent her life "giving birth to a distinct body of creative digital work."

Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin describes Bush as "an American artist whose work explores the possibilities of ready-made clip art in a warped, funny, and satirical reevaluation of the American Dream."

Bush's Web sites and supersized digital illustrations are political, but not preachy, thanks to her bawdy sense of humor. Her most recent exhibition, for instance, was inspired by the recent voter-approved ban on gay marriage. The exhibition's title for this serious subject: "You & What Army! Combative Digital Love Squirts by Katie Bush." One large-scale triptych shows, in Bush's words, an ominous Mormon church aiming nuclear missiles "at screaming gay baby heads who projectile vomit color onto ... lesbian cheerleaders." In other words, something for everyone.

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

Tyson Ayers uses large piano parts to create what he calls a "Sound Cave." People crawl inside the cave, a tiny space that's also grand, and run their fingers along the strings. He says the cave captures any sounds the person makes "and echoes them back for long periods of time." Ayers' piano soundboards are specially tuned to the Schumann resonances, a mysterious scale that reflects the music made by planet Earth as lightning strikes. Oh, and Soundboard #5 is tuned to the Music of the Spheres, the "same mathematical formula as the Earth -- Moon -- Sun." It's all pretty cosmic, and pretty cool.

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

Many of us in the Bay Area have used Craigslist to find cheap furniture. In the spirit of creative reuse, designer Peter Raphael Russo went a step further, obtaining junk from the "Free Stuff" section of Craigslist and turning that junk into functional but mind-bending chairs and furniture. One wood-framed chair features a quilt of woven old ties used to make the C-shaped seat. His masterpiece, though, is a sofa that uses sod grass instead of seat cushions and back rests.

"My furniture is modern, with somewhat of a mid-century influence," he says. "I strive for all of my work (both furniture and nonfurniture alike) to be serious but not stuffy, with an eye for detail."

Russo didn't say how often someone would need to mow the sofa.

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

Nara Denning is the girl version of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin; her antique aesthetic is mixed with a real gift for storytelling and some tech genius. Her silent films show off San Francisco in all its blackshadowed glory, buildings tilted impossibly and neon signs glowing from every corner. Shadows and reflections are specialties, often digitally enhanced but never corny. She's obviously a fan of German Expressionism, but not a servant of it - we like the way she plays with intertitles.

She also draws from an interesting pool of local talent, notably composer Stoo Odom, whose original scores help hold her silent narratives together.

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

This is exactly what DIY filmmaking should be: crude, odd, and rough, but easy to watch and funny. Jose Montesinos seems to have Robert Rodriguez' innate sense of nuts-and-bolts composition and sound, John Waters' egalitarian potty humor, and Russ Meyer's love of butt-kickin' babes. Sharp editing means the pacing is right, and sharp editing is hard work.

Montesino's Hell's Kittens, the boner-joke-spitting little sister of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, is currently our favorite piece, but his other work -- a kung fu soap opera, for one -- shows that he is reliably good at making movies.

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

Mari Naomi has made a name for herself among comic nerds for Estrus, which she described in a 2007 interview with SFist as "mostly a collection of embarrassing autobiographical comics about my love life." But while some have fallen in love with her comic, we fell for her paintings and watercolors. Our favorite pieces are her watercolors that combine two of our favorite things: Clowns and sumo wrestlers. These sumo-wrestling clowns belch primary-colored balloons as they grapple with each other and assume those funny sumo-style squats.

We also admired her works using recycled materials such as the "Broken Heart" series. In "Set Them Free," Naomi painted comical fishes on the panes of an old window that swim by a collage of love letters and gifts from high school boyfriends in the background of the frame. In her works, she manages to be humorous and vulnerable at the same time, qualities that seem as though they should be familiar to Estrus readers.

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

Jasmin Zorlu's hats are famous: Erykah Badu has three.

Using fur felt and -- seriously -- fish leather, Zorlu makes hats that recall flappers, freedom fighters, and femmes fatales. Convertible cloches, military caps infested with bows, and her signature Molecular Mermaid Helmet come from a broad background in clothing design, and a special interest in your head.

Zorlu is very much an artist with a specific vision, and we're excited she calls San Francisco home. Talent, skill, energy, and hard work mean this independent-minded milliner has a strong future in the fashion world.