Each year, Arts Nova Scotia brings together a committee of professional Nova Scotian artists and arts professionals to recognize some of the exceptional art of their province with their Creative Nova Scotia Awards Gala in Halifax. Based on professional recognition and ranging from local to as far as international accreditation, these awards come highly esteemed and see over $90,000 put towards arts funding. Here are the 2018 Arts Nova Scotia award recipients.
This year, the arts organization adopted a theme of “Flow”, seeking to utilize water as an artistic metaphor, given its ties with the province and its crucial role in sustaining life, much like how artists are pivotal to the cultural environment.
“I applaud Arts Nova Scotia and the Creative Nova Scotia Leadership Council for organizing this amazing event honouring our outstanding Nova Scotian artists,” said Leo Glavine, Minister of Communities, Culture and Heritage. “The talented work shown makes our province a centre of excellence in the flourishing creative industry.”
Halifax’s Ronald Bourgeois won the $25,000 Portia White Prize for his songwriting. While Bourgeois collected $18,000 of the total, the remaining $7,000 was to be allocated to an entity of his choosing. The Francophone songwriter chose La Société Saint-Pierre of Chéticamp, a historical society that is committed to maintaining Acadian language and culture.
The influential musician is well-known for his French lyrics, and with his distinctly Atlantic-Canadian guitar style, even the non-fluent can get lost in his simple yet touching tracks.
Claude Chaloux of Digby also reflects his Acadian heritage into his visual art, which led to his winning of the $5000 Prix Grand-Pré.
The $5,000 Indigenous Artist Recognition Award went to Halifax’s former poet laureate and activist Rebecca Thomas, who uses her work to share the history and culture of Indigenous Peoples.
Thomas’s emotionally-charged, insightful wordplay brings a powerful spotlight to history and culture alike, and those who hear her speak just might have their worldview spectacularly renewed.
Other awards given out include the $10,000 Community Arts and Culture Recognition Award, going to the Town of Shelburne, and the $25,000 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award—the largest annual award to any work of art in Nova Scotia—to Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, created by Christian Barry, Ben Caplan and Hannah Moscovitch.
Digital artist Anne Macmillan and filmmaker Stephanie Clattenburg were the two emerging artists to receive the $5,000 Emerging Artist Award, which recognizes artists in the early-stages of their creative careers
Macmillan’s work “looks at the effects of observation upon both the subject and object under investigation.” She combines statistical knowledge with more intrinsic, poetic ways of acquiring knowledge. She has taken part in residencies in Alberta and France, and has studied in the graduate program of Art, Culture and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Clattenburg has over 13 years of filmmaking experience under her belt. Her first film, a documentary called Play Your Gender, was awarded the Edith Lando Peace Prize for its message of social justice and peace from The Reel 2 Real Film Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Meanwhile, three artists received the $5,000 Established Artist Recognition Award, which recognizes professional mid-career artists. The winners this year were multi-disciplinary artist Anna Sprague, multi-instrumentalist and composition professor Derek Charke, and dancer and choreographer Sara Coffin.
Sprague is constantly revolving her creative medium depending on her setting and theme. The NSCAD faculty member has been known to create wearable sculptural outfits from all manner of materials, orthodox or not. Sprague also no stranger to movement and performance-based displays, sometimes engaging with the public in her creation.
Charke, professor at Acadia University, sports a collection of over 90 musical pieces and several high-profile collaborations consisting of many of Canada’s major symphony orchestras. The JUNO/ECMA award winner also performs as a soloist and new music improviser.
Coffin has been teaching and practicing her craft for over 20 years. The award-winning dance educator has created over 30 different pieces of interdisciplinary, contemporary dance pieces, presented in many prominent dance festivals around North America.
Coffin’s work explores “technology as an extension of the body, contact improvisation, and the poetic junction between vulnerability, resiliency, and courage.”