 |
 |
|
||||
|
|
The Alabama State Council on the Arts honored the 2003 Arts Award recipients at a performance and reception on Friday, May 2 at the Davis Theatre for the Performing Arts, located in downtown Montgomery. The Tom Wolfe Group entertained the incoming audience with jazz music. The award presentations began at 7:00 P.M. Awards presented included the Jonnie Dee Little Lifetime Achievement Award, the Distinguished Artist Award, the Alabama Folk Heritage Award and the Governor's Arts Awards. The George Washington Carver High School Choir closed the program with a powerful and moving presentation. A reception for the honorees followed in the Alabama Artists Gallery at 201 Monroe Street. The Selma Youth Development Dance Company performed a variety of dance styles, from contemporary to reflections in African heritage. Live drum accompaniment was provided by Frank Hardy and Tim Sheehey.
2003
Distinguished
Artist Award Albert Murray was born in 1916 in the tiny south Alabama spot in the road, Nokomis. No one could have predicted how wide-ranging that young boy's experiences and his influences would be. Educated at Tuskegee University where he later taught literature and directed the college theatre program, he met Ralph Ellison, his lifelong friend and intellectual sparring partner. The book Trading Twelves, published in 2000, is a collection of selected letters of these two. After retiring from the United States Air Force in 1970, he began to write in earnest. He is the author of many works of fiction, including the trilogy of Scooter novels-Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots-and nonfiction, including Blue Devils of Nada in which Murray wrote, "My stories are really about what it means to be human." Don Noble has written, "Murray is perhaps the only Alabama fiction writer who is also, in his nonfiction, a genuine intellectual." Murray has been O'Connor Professor of Literature at Colgate University, visiting professor of literature at the University of Massachusetts, writer-in-residence at Emory University, and Paul Anthony Brick lecturer at the University of Missouri. Author and critic Stanley Crouch declared Murray as "my mentor and far more my father than the fellow whose blood runs through my veins." Albert Murray has influenced artists as diverse as Walker Percy, Romare Bearden, and Wynton Marsalis, who said, "…I'm always too embarrassed to be around him, because he knows so much I always feel I'm just in the way. But it really made me develop my intellectual curiosity, and Al Murray would give me a book to read, and tell me where to go, and tell me about an important exhibit in town, go check this out." In a 1996 New Yorker piece called "King of Cats," Henry Louis Gates describes Murray "possessed of the poet's language, the novelist's sensibility, the essayist's clarity, the jazzman's imagination, the gospel singer's depth of feeling." Further, he concludes, "This is Albert Murray's century; we just live in it." Describing Bearden's work, Mr. Murray said, " a Bearden works on the beholder not only as a work of art, but as something even deeper; a totemistic device and talisman for keeping the blues away." He could just as easily been describing his own work. For the strength and clarity of your words, for the acuity and perception of your vision, and for the mythic power of your storytelling, we honor you! The
2003 Jonnie Dee Little Lifetime Achievement Award If you go
to the Montgomery Museum or to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival during
the day, you are likely to see them---bus after bus, unloading
schoolchildren from all over the city, as well as from all regions of
the state. You might just as easily catch sight of a tall, elegant
gentleman watching them with quiet pride. That man would be Philip
Sellers. The Montgomery investment banker, former president of the
Montgomery Chamber of Commerce, is a long-time member of the boards of
ASF, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, and the Montgomery Symphony.
This tireless volunteer has worked with the YMCA, the Montgomery Area
United Way, Jackson and Baptist Hospitals, the Montgomery Area Council
on Aging, Huntingdon College, and the Davis Theatre for the Performing
Arts. In recognition of his myriad activities in support of improved quality of life in Montgomery, Mr. Sellers was named Citizen of the Year in 1988. When the Alabama Shakespeare Festival came to Montgomery, Philip Sellers was made chairman of the board. He has said, in typical style, "It was a wonderful experience. I think I got much more out of it than I put into it." Never short on vision, even Sellers admits that he couldn't foresee the immensity of the change in the arts in Montgomery when he returned here after serving in the Pacific theatre in World War II. Seemingly tireless, he is dropping off of some of the committees he has long served on. However, he does so realizing the huge impact they have had on the Montgomery area. "I don't think we were smart enough to think of the arts in business terms, what it might mean as far as attracting industry to the community," he said. "We looked at it more in terms of what it meant to children, and to the generations who would come long after them." Because of Mr. Sellers varied activities, the entire Montgomery area, as well as the state, witnesses world-class theatre, hears inspiring symphonic music, and experiences painting and sculpture of unsurpassed beauty. The 2003 Governor's Arts Awards Three Alabamians received the Governor's Arts Awards. Dr. Johnny Long, Troy; Amanda Penick, Tuscaloosa; and, Cecil Whitmire, Birmingham. For more information click here. The 2003 Alabama Folk Heritage Award
Jerry
Brown of Hamilton received the 2003 Alabama Folk Heritage Award. This
annual award was established to recognize master folk artists who have
made outstanding contributions to their particular artistic tradition.
The award is intended to honor long-term achievement with art forms that
are rooted in the traditional or ethnic culture of Alabama. The
following standards are considered in choosing the outstanding folk
heritage artist: the degree of authenticity of the tradition the artist
practices; the level of artistic excellence of the artist, as reflected
by work done over an extended period of time; the overall significance
of the individual within his or her tradition; and the degree to which
the individual has played a role in perpetuating a tradition within a
community context. |
|||||
|
||||||
|
home | news | grants | arts & artists | folklife | educational | council | library | calendar | contact us |
