2011 Sonoma County Artists Awards Winners Announced

Arts Council of Sonoma County and Community Foundation Sonoma County are delighted to announce the winners of the 2011 Sonoma County Artist Awards for Performing, Music and Literary Arts. Eliot Fintushel (Santa Rosa), Steve Pile (Santa Rosa), and Joan Frank (Santa Rosa) will each receive a $5,000 unrestricted cash award in recognition of their outstanding work and to advance their development as artists.

Fintushel, Pile and Frank, were selected from more than 42 applicants who were among 64 artists nominated for the awards. Artist nominations were invited from Sonoma County arts organizations, and artists working and performing in the three categories.

New this year, the panelists making the final decisions on the awards reviewed all the applications online and hailed from Sonoma County, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Canada and the UK. The program was the first time that the process, from nomination, application, submission and judging was completed totally online.
The Sonoma County Artist Awards will assist the artists not only in providing financial assistance to their art endeavors, but also in publicizing their innovative work.
ABOUT THE WINNERS
Eliot Fintushel. Nominated by Artists Matlock Zumsteg and Melissa Gordon. "I never wanted to be a damn ‘artist': I was driven to it scratching and screaming, by internal necessity, a combination of emotional vulcanism, indecent curiosity, and the desire to understand connections where everyone assured me there were none. It saved my life, though: I'd been a suicidal teen. Maybe, in my thirty years as an artist, (ugh--the word!), I've saved a few others as well. It doesn't matter, though--I'm driven. When not creating, I'm just miserable. When creating, I feel fit."

Steve Pile. Nominated by Columnist John Beck. "My primary mediums are guitar, voice and Kora (a west African Harp). My musical world spans from my own back porch to West Africa. As I continue to grow as an artist, more influences dot this ever expanding musical map. This inclusive approach has led to discoveries that have expanded my musical vocabulary and shaped me as an artist. My tradition follows the singer-songwriter path popularized by artists such as Paul Simon and Paul McCartney, incorporating a variety of styles from rock to African rhythms. Lyrically, I tend to follow the rule of 'the more personal the story, the more universal its appeal.' Although my lyrics come from personal experience, my goal is to reach a wider audience. My new album, ‘Got it Right', continues to expand this patchwork to include rock, blues, folk, country and of course, the fruits of my recent African travels."

Joan Frank. Nominated by Playwright Robert Duxbury. "A single phrase describing my work, borrowed from the late author Katherine Anne Porter, might be ‘a moral and emotional collision with a human situation.' By virtue of writing it, one seeks to grasp it. And even if one never gets a total grasp of that ‘collision', we are too mysterious perhaps? Something of its essence, its mystery and dignity, are conveyed in the depiction. A writer writes to investigate. But by giving work life on the page, by being as scrupulously true to her perception of the human moment as she can by allowing it to open in her hand, to some degree she offers it into a kind of 'dimensionalizing' amber. She gives it a resonance that, however small or quiet, will stand. Something is grasped or felt or apprehended, by both writer and reader that was not available when both set out."

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Sonoma County Artist Awards is a program of the Arts Council of Sonoma County, funded in part by the Artist Endowment Fund at Community Foundation Sonoma County. It debuted as a biennial program in 2006 and expanded to annual with the inaugural Performing, Music, and Literary Artist Awards in 2009. The program was modeled after the prestigious Eureka Fellowships award of San Francisco's Fleishhacker Foundation and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's SECA Award. The program expansion to include performing and literary artists was modeled after USA Artists, a National Artist Fellowship awards program.

To support up and coming artists and build a broader arts sector for Sonoma County, the 2011 awards are designed to recognize and award excellence in both artistic merit and body of work to individual artists working in Sonoma County, and in particular, artists who will have a significant impact on the arts in the future.

A dedicated website may be found at www.artscouncilsc.com/scaa.

Three panels of three judges per category were invited to take part. Because all applications were lodged online there were no restrictions as to the geographic location of the panelists who performed their adjudications from where they worked and resided.

Brad Erickson. Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area. Performing Arts. Bay Area Val Caniparoli. Choreographer. San Francisco Ballet. Performing Arts. Bay Area Peter Barlow. Principal. Guildford Conservatory for Acting and Music, UK. Performing Arts. United Kingdom David Balakrishnan. Leader: The Turtle String Quartet. Music Arts. Bay Area Janis Dunson Wilson. Composer and Arranger. Music Arts. Sonoma County Schaun Tozer. Film Score and Television Score Composer. Canada. Music Arts. Canada Robert Polito. Poet. University College. Literary Arts. New York Brighde Mullins. Poet/Playwright. UCLA Literary Arts. Los Angeles John Kaye. Author and Scriptwriter. Literary Arts. Sonoma County
Former Emerging Visual Artists 2010 award recipients:
Tramaine de Senna, Emerging Visual Artist (Sebastopol) Laine Justice, Emerging Visual Artist (Healdsburg) Andrew Sofie, Emerging Visual Artist (Calistoga)
Former Performing, Music, and Literary 2009 award recipients:
Robin Beeman, Literary Artist (Occidental)
Jim Corbett, Music Artist (Sebastopol)
John Harden, Performing Artist (Santa Rosa)
Former Emerging Visual Artist 2008 award recipients:
Sarah Frieberg, Emerging Visual Artist (Petaluma)
Geirrod Van Dyke, Emerging Visual Artist (Santa Rosa)
Julie Cavaz, Emerging Visual Artist (Sonoma)
Former Emerging Visual Artist 2006 award recipients:
Catherine Richardson, Emerging Visual Artist (Santa Rosa)
Todd Barricklow, Emerging Visual Artist (Santa Rosa)
Seth Minor, Emerging Visual Artist (Camp Meeker)

The Arts Council of Sonoma County: founded in 1984 as a nonprofit community benefit organization, the Arts Council believes that a vibrant and diverse arts and cultural sector is invaluable to our community, enhancing the lives of every individual and strengthening the connectivity of a community as a whole.

We advocate for the arts and arts accessibility countywide. We promote collaboration, raise the visibility of the arts, and re-grant funding to artists, art educators, and art organizations, to provide broader services to our community and tourist base. Since 1984 the Board of Supervisors has reauthorized the Arts Council of Sonoma County as the State/County arts and cultural organization representing the arts in Sonoma County. The Arts Council provides leadership in support of the growth and accessibility of all art and artists in Sonoma County.

 

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