Abdi Farah enjoys being the sole survivor.

When Bravo's "Work of Art" premiered June 9, two men and one woman with Baltimore connections were among the 14 artists competing for the show's grand prize of $100,000 and an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In the weeks since, however, Jaclyn Santos and John Parot, both of whom studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art, have packed their easels and gone home.

With the contestants whittled down to three and the final competition set to air Wednesday, only Farah remains. And no one's more surprised than he is, or more psyched.

"It feels amazing," says Farah, 23, a graduate of Towson's Carver School for the Arts who now lives in Dover, Pa. "It's weird. Maybe this isn't the most competitive to say, but really, my biggest goal was to get to the finale. What an awesome privilege, to be able to show an entire body of work to the judges. I'm on cloud nine."

We caught up with Farah over the phone. Although the finale has already been shot and the winner decided, he was careful not to even hint at how things turn out. But clearly, Farah believes he's already won something.

Question: Were you able to tell your family, were you able to level with anybody as far as how far you advanced?

Answer: The only person that knows how far I got is my mom; she's the only one. All the rest of my family, they're on the edge of their seats, especially during the last couple of episodes, when I was in the bottom.

Q: So, realistically, when you started this process, how far did you think you'd get? Did you think you'd be in it for the long run?

A: It's weird, I had absolutely no clue. I like my art, so I think I'm decent at it. I felt like I could do pretty good in the competition, but then, when I got to New York, I had this real slight anxiety attack. I was walking down this real empty street, between one of the avenues, it was like the one empty street in New York, tumbleweeds blowing, plastic bags blowing — and I was, like, "Oh my God, what have I done? I'm going to be embarrassed on national television. I'm going to be the obvious weak link, they're going to send me home right away and I never really should have done this."

But all that faded away. Once I got started, it was like, "Yeah, this is what I do all the time." It was fun.

Q: Do you feel that you've grown as an artist in the course of the competition?

A: I feel like I grew more as an artist in the course of the competition than I have throughout my years of college. Because of this competition, I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip grad school, just because I doubt that two years of grad school could compare to what I learned in the [time] on the show. It sounds like hyperbole, but it's the honest truth.

It's like the life of an artist, on steroids, on fast-forward. We're making a piece of art every other day, having a show every other day. It's immediate work, immediate feedback. Sometimes your subconscious takes over, and you make something that is either really good or really bad, but it's always really fresh and completely different than anything you have done in your studio work.

Q: How do you feel, being the last Baltimorean standing?

A: First of all, I was the only Baltimorean [laughing]. The other two just lived there for school.

It feels really good. I really love Baltimore, and I feel like it has such a rich cultural heritage that people just don't really know about or don't care to think about. I'm hoping that my presence can just tell people that Baltimore is cool.

Q: Were you able to establish a relationship with your other two even-if-temporary Baltimoreans?

A: I love them to pieces. I was actually really cool with both of them. Me and Jackie knew a lot of mutual friends — MICA was basically my high school, so she knew everybody that was a couple years older than me that I went to high school with. And even though John didn't know many of the people, we still knew Baltimore; we talked a lot about the sketchy areas, the good areas, how productive an artist community Baltimore was. Which was interesting to hear from other people, because it's stuff that I've felt for a long time.

chris.kaltenbach@baltsun.com

On TV

The finale of "Work of Art" airs at 10 p.m. Wednesday on Bravo.