Columbus, Ohio – The Greater Columbus Arts Council is pleased to announce the individual winners of the 2012 Community Arts Partnership Awards presented by PNC in the categories of Arts Educator, Arts Partnerand Emerging Arts Leader. The winners will be honored at GCAC’s annual Community Arts Partnership awards program luncheon on Thursday, October 18 from noon-1:30 p.m. at the Statehouse downtown at 1 Capitol Square. The community is invited to join GCAC and hundreds of business, arts and civic leaders to celebrate this year’s nominees and winners and the work they do every day to create a thriving and vibrant creative community in Columbus. To register to attend, go to www.gcac.org/community-arts-partnership/. Registration will close on October 9.
GCAC’s annual Community Arts Partnership Awards honor Columbus individuals for their exemplary support and leadership in the arts and the Columbus business community for its active support of central Ohio’s arts organizations. More than 30 businesses and individuals were nominated this year. Business honorees in the Small, Medium and Large categories will be announced at the event on October 18.
Individual award winners are:
Cindy Meyers Foley, will receive this year’s Arts Educator award. In her role as director of education at the Columbus Museum of Art, Meyers Foley has been focused on the initiatives of the museum’s Center for Creativity—a place that fosters the 21st century skills of creativity, critical thinking, imagination, collaboration and communication. She has been instrumental in securing commitment to creativity as a core value of the institution. Meyers Foley brings a unique and radical new vision to arts education and the role of the arts in learning, and the role the museum and creativity play in a community. Cindy Meyers Foley is a national leader on the subject of 21st century learning. She presented at the 2011 National Art Education Association conference on a panel with leading educators from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Meyers Foley often provides professional development to Ohio educators on 21st century learning skills including most recently, presenting at the Ohio Innovative Learning Environments conference. This summer, Foley was awarded a Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero Classroom Institute, an intensive, week-long program that emphasizes enduring questions about best practices in teaching, learning, and assessment. Through her work, Meyers Foley has encouraged a new way of thinking about arts education; opening a conversation that shifts art from being a handmaiden to other disciplines or about learning technical skills to art being about a process of building ideas, asking questions, taking risks and most importantly about thinking.
Marvin and Sue Katz are the recipients of the Arts Partner award. The Katz’ are two visionary and generous people who have been quietly and compassionately nurturing the central Ohio artist community for more than three decades. Through their earnest, ongoing efforts the Katz’ have helped provide working space to artists in Columbus for a very low cost. Always with a keen sense of what visual artists need to incubate their work, the Katz’ began in the early 1980s to offer artists inexpensive, safe, and roomy studios in the Buggyworks building and in the Belmont Caskets building (now known as part of the Arena District). Over time, through their small company, KAPAC, the Katz family has obtained several properties and increasingly have made the provision of artists’ studios central to their core business. Their properties have included Glass Axis, Omar Bakery, 4290 E. Walnut Street, Jaeger Commerce Park, Union Tool, and the Millworks property, which has alone supported more than 30 artists including Todd Slaughter, Pheoris West, Kelly Malec-Kosak, Susan Li O’Connor, Rod Bouc and Anne Holman. In addition to support of local artists, the Katz’ also have been incredibly generous to struggling non-profits. Recognition of their ongoing and generous support of the arts and artists in the community is well-deserved.
Eva Ball, executive director at Glass Axis, will receive the Emerging Arts Leader award. Ball has been a driving force in the Columbus arts community for more than 10 years investing her time, energy and personal resources into bolstering the community’s cultural equity and creative excellence. In her personal and professional life, Ball is committed to art as a philosophy, life practice and venue for social and culture change and uplift. She works tirelessly to create and promote art in the local community while challenging and encouraging other artists and community members to do the same. She has a gift for inspiring and actively motivating collaboration in her artistic endeavors, and the results speak for themselves in the growth of the many organizations into which she puts her energy. Ball has supported such organizations as Skylab, Shelf Gallery, the Ohio Art League, OSU Urban Arts Space Goodwill Columbus, CCAD, OSU Arts and Sciences and many more. Whether curating exhibitions, fundraising and managing operations for local arts organizations, exploring art and culture through writing or creating her own inspired work, she is clearly exhilarated by the vision and challenge of transforming Columbus and the world through art. Her most recent work as executive director of Glass Axis, she brought Axis out of the red, strengthened the board, motivated hundreds of volunteers and stabilized the business and education programs. With her help, Glass Axis will continue to provide the community the tools necessary to passionately create innovative works in glass while learning, sharing, and teaching, becoming a vibrant civic hub of art production and community participation, bolstering sustainable cultural equity throughout Ohio and beyond.
It’s a great honor to be nominated for the Community Arts Partnership Awards and GCAC is pleased to share the list of additional nominees for this year’s individual award categories and the business award nominees:
Arts Educator
Holly Adkins-Ardrey, nominated by Java Kitrick
Roxanne Holonitch, nominated by Belinda Quisenberry
Jean Pitman, nominated by Amanda Potter
Milt Ruffin, nominated by Johnny Merry
Emerging Arts Leader
Michelle Brandt, nominated by Renee Cloyd
Elizabeth Dekker, nominated by Adam Brouillette
Mariah Layne French, nominated by Beth Fairman Kinney
Heather Garner, nominated by Jennifer Spaulding
Janelle Hallett, nominated by Donna Collins
Erin Hoppe, nominated by Morgan Green
Jason Moore, nominated by Laura McDonald
Stephanie Rond, nominated by Chuck Cody
Arts Partner
Martin Inglis, nominated by Lucy Godman
Alan Jazak, nominated by Patrick Roehrenbeck
Charles Warner, nominated by Daniel Jensen
Large Business
PNC, nominated by Columbus Museum of Art, New Albany Symphony, ProMusica and Thurber House
State Auto Insurance, nominated by Jazz Arts Group
Medium Business
Goodwill Industries, nominated by Java Kitrick
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, nominated by Wexner Center for the Arts
Jones Day, nominated by ProMusica Chamber Orchestra
Renaissance Hotels, nominated by CAPA / Columbus Symphony Orchestra
SBC Advertising, nominated by Westerville Symphony at Otterbein University
Vorys Sater Seymour & Pease, nominated by Wexner Center for the Arts
Small Business
Capital Crossroads, nominated by CAPA
CD102.5 FM, nominated by the North Market
Portfolio Creative, nominated by Blue Tree Media
Refectory, nominated by ProMusica Chamber Orchestra
In addition to announcing the business award winners at the October 18 luncheon, GCAC will also present its Artistic Excellence Award—a $10,000 prize given annually to an arts organization that has demonstrated innovation, risk and artistic excellence in a performance, exhibition or program.
The 2012 Artistic Excellence nominee finalists are: BalleMet Columbus, Columbus Jazz Orchestra and WOSU Public Media for Jazz Moves;Columbus Museum of Art for The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936 – 1951; COSI for RACE: Are We So Different?; Jazz Arts Group for Beyond the Blackberry Patch; MadLab for the Young Writers Short Play Festival; and WOSU Public Media for Columbus Neighborhoods.The GCAC Board’s Community Arts Partnership committee selects the individual and business winners each year. GCAC’s Board of Trustees meets just prior to the Community Arts Partnership awards luncheon to select the Artistic Excellence Award winner.
The 2012 Community Arts Partnership Awards are presented by PNC. Media sponsors include CityScene Magazine, Time Warner Cable and WOSU. Awards sponsors are American Electric Power, Nationwide and Time Warner Cable.
About the Greater Columbus Arts Council: Through vision and leadership, advocacy and collaboration, the Greater Columbus Arts Council supports art and advances the culture of the region. A catalyst for excellence and innovation, we fund exemplary artists and arts organizations and provide programs, events and services of public value that educate and engage all audiences in our community. GCAC thanks the City of Columbus, Franklin County and the Ohio Arts Council for their continued support.
# # #
CONTACT: Jami Goldstein
(614) 221-8492
jgoldstein@gcac.org
