What would you do with a $30,000 prize? A ceramicist, a mixed media artist and a Guatemalan backstrap weaver are competing for one of Maryland’s top art prizes to answer that question.

The Janet and Walter Sondheim Art Prize seeks to help artists who work and live in Baltimore further their craft. The artists display their works at The Walters Art Museum and are assessed by a panel of jurors that specialize in different media.

Ceramicist Sam Mack said “it feels incredible” to be a finalist.

Mack’s work is based on the transformation of their materials alongside their lived experience of being a trans person.

For example, Mack created vessels in the shape of to-go cups or attached testosterone cypionate — a muscle injection intended to increase a person’s testosterone levels — to a structure. He also encourages cracks and different textured surfaces as a means of showing movement or transitions.

He wants his art to interact with the people observing it.

“The viewer’s body is the only figure sort of represented in the work, so people are kind of aware of how precarious the display is through the embodied experience of viewership,” Mack said.

If he wins, Mack wants to enhance and expand their work area, which includes investing in equipment.

“It would be a huge, huge positive impact just in terms of getting support for studio practice and you know, be able to get a kiln and things of that nature would just be immense, immense help,” Mack said.

Mixed-media artist Amy Boone-McCreesh, who teaches at Maryland Institute College of Art and has been a Baltimore resident since 2008, hopes to use the money to move to a larger studio space where she can dedicate more time to her projects.

Her work investigates class, taste and access in relation to the interior and exterior of our living spaces.

“Like the way that we decorate our homes, you low-key judge people based on their decorations or what’s going on in their home. And I think that says a lot about how we present ourselves and where we came from,” Boone-McCreesh said.

Hellen Ascoli is a Guatemalan weaver and also a teacher at MICA who works with a backstrap loom to weave open pieces that engage different cultural forms, such as oral traditions, material and poetry.

Using her body to engage with the loom, Ascoli’s physical attachment to the work allows her to make other connections to culture and language. She looks at material and movement as a way of understanding the interplay between bodies and the space they occupy.

This year marks the 19th annual Sondheim prize, which is named in honor of creative pioneer and dancer Janet Sondheim and civic leader Walter Sondheim. Both played foundational roles in developing arts and culture in Baltimore.

Last year, the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts announced Abigail Lucien as the winner, her work looking at the ways our cultural identities and social stimuli disperse through our bodies and minds, challenging assimilation through materials.

Current finalists’ works will be displayed at The Walters now through Sept. 8. There’ll also be an artist talk on July 25 before determining a winner to be announced on Aug. 22.