Mayor’s awards showcase arts and culture scene.
Three of Edmonton’s most inspired and innovative practitioners and promoters of the local arts scene are among the nominees for the 27th annual Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts Awards.
Visual artist Jennifer Annesley, who captures a powerful sense of place in watercolour and charcoal, is nominated for the ATB Financial Ambassador of the Arts Award. Her fellow ambassadorial nominees are Prairie Dog Film and Television, producers of the high-profile, muchawarded TV series Blackstone, and Rapid Fire Theatre, Edmonton’s elite and burgeoning improv comedy troupe. It not only produces weekly entertainments but hosts international tournaments and public workshops in the theatrical art of ultimate spontaneity.
The three were among nominations in 11 categories announced Monday by the Professional Arts Coalition of Edmonton (PACE). Among veteran artists — across the theatrical, visual, literary spectrum — are the four nominees in the “outstanding lifetime achievement” award — painter and educator Douglas D. Barry, writer/historian Tony Cashman, the highly original visual artist Lyndal Osborne, and actor/director/teacher Jan Henderson, a nationally recognized expert in the field of clowning.
In the “emerging artist” category, the six-member nominee list includes Edmonton Journal arts writer Elizabeth Withey, whose One Hundred Widows art exhibition, whimsical and poignant, was at the Latitude 53 gallery last fall, and paired single earrings with the stories of their acquisition and widowhood. Dancer/choreographer Ainsley Hillyard, artistic director of Good Women Dance Collective, is on that list, too, along with the versatile a rtist/i l lustrator Jason Blower, ja zz musicia n Nuela Charles, artist/photographer Alexis Marie Chute, and Doug Organ, the multifaceted musicia n who runs the recording studio Edmontone.
The DIALOG Award for excellence in artistic direction will go to one of three nominees: Ian Crutchley of the Society for New Music in Edmonton, Prairie Dog Film and Television’s Ron E. Scott, and Amy Shostak, artistic director of Rapid Fire Theatre.
Lynn Coady’s 2013 Giller Prizewinning short story collection Hellgoing is up for the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize, along with Tim Bowling’s Selected Poems, and Disinherited Generations: Our Struggle to Reclaim Treaty Rights for First Nations Women and Their Descendants by Nellie Carlson and Kathleen Steinhauer, as told to Linda Goyette.
Catherine Crowston, executive director and chief curator of the Art Gallery of Alberta, is one of the six nominees for the Syncrude Award For Excellence in Arts Management. The other occupants of the category are Chenoa Anderson of the Society for New Music in Edmonton, Dave Cunningham of FAVA (Film and Visual Arts Society), Paul Matwychuk of NeWest Press, Al Rasko of the Edmonton Poetry Festival, and Jesse Szymanski of Prairie Dog Film and Television.
The CN Youth Artist Award nominees are Chilanda Bashangi, Aidan Burke, Abbie Cogger, Rebecca Lappa and Jeremy Tameta.
The Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts was created as a showcase for Edmonton’s vibrant arts and culture industry — its artists, promoters and appreciators, and its supporters in the media and business community.
The awards will be presented April 28 at the Winspear Centre, in a show that includes performances by such artists as Mark Meer, Bridget Ryan, Jeff Stuart and the Hearts, and others. Tickets: 780428-1414 or winspearcentre.com. The full nomination list is available at pacedmonton.com.