The Tampa Bay Lightning and Lightning Foundation honored local artists at Thursday night's "Celebration of the Arts" at the Tampa Bay Times Forum. Pieces of art submitted by local artists were selected by a committee of judges to be displayed on the walls of the Executive Suite Level at the Forum.

Spearheaded by Penny Vinik, wife of Lightning owner Jeff Vinik, a group of judges including executive directors from local museums Todd Smith (Tampa Museum of Art), Dr. Hank Hine (Dali Museum), Dr. Kent Lydecker (Museum of Fine Arts) and Mrs. Vinik evaluated nearly 300 submissions, narrowing them down to 41 and awarding cash prizes to the top three. The third place winner, receiving $500, was Brandon Marshall of St. Petersburg, The runner-up was Brad Bazin of Lutz who received $1000 and the first place winner was Nicole Abbett of Tampa. A complete list of artists and their works is below.

For owner Jeff Vinik, this is another step in getting the organization involved with the community. "As long as we can keep coming up with good ideas to help the community and to help people's lives, whether it's regional ideas like this to display artwork or the Community Heroes program or the C.H.A.R.G.E. program where our employees volunteer 4,000 hours a year, as long as we can help people, we will", he said. "We want to do everything we can to support this community and hopefully make it a better place. I'm very lucky to have these people on my team. We're very fortunate to be in a high profile position where people listen when we have something to say. We take that responsibility very seriously."

Artists & artwork