The Everett Cultural Arts Commission’s 2014 recipients of the Mayor’s Arts Awards and the Richard Wendt Award of Excellence will be honored Wednesday.
Mayor Ray Stephanson plans to distribute the awards during a free, public celebration Nov. 19 at the Hansen Conference Center, Xfinity Arena, 2000 Hewitt Ave., Everett. Doors open at 5 p.m. and the program begins at 5:30 p.m.
The mayor’s awards have been won by KidStage director Kati Nickerson, glass artist Stan Price, the band Fauna Shade and the Everett Film Festival, honored as an organization “making a difference in the arts.”
The coveted Wendt Award of Excellence winner is former Everett Community College art instructor Russell Day, now 101.
The Wendt is given annually to a person who has demonstrated support of the arts throughout his or her life. Day, who influenced such artists as Dale Chihuly and Chuck Close, certainly deserves this lifetime achievement award.
Wendt, who died in 2007, was a longtime promoter of the arts in Everett. He helped found the city’s Cultural Arts Commission and the 1 Percent for the Arts program in the city.
This is the 22nd year of the Wendt Award and the 40th anniversary of the city’s 1 Percent for the Arts Fund. Everett was one of the first cities in the country to adopt a percent-for-art ordinance. The program specifies that 1 percent of eligible city capital improvement project funds be set aside for the purchase and installation of artwork. The arts commission created the mayor’s arts awards in 2010 to honor those who demonstrate a commitment to the Everett arts scene.
More about the award winners:
Russell Day was an innovative art teacher at Everett Community College from the late 1940s through the late 1970s. Known as an artistic design pioneer, he especially enjoyed his work in jewelry and glass. Along with internationally known Close and Chihuly, he encouraged many well-known local artists. The gallery at the college is named for Day.
The Everett Film Festival, now under the direction of Teresa Henderson, was started in 1997 by Annie Lyman and other women who pooled their resources to fund the festival and its focus on women. Today, the festival has a wider focus and includes features, short films, animation and documentary films.
Fauna Shade, a new psychedelic indie rock band, includes members Ryile Smith and Scotty Smith, both in their early 20s. They aren’t brothers, but they grew up together in Everett and began playing music as students at North Middle School. The band performed at the Fisherman’s Village Music Festival back in May. Ryan Crowther and Steven Graham of Everett Music Initiative have taken the band under their wings, as have the well-known Everett band Moondoggies.
Stan Price and his wife Colleen are the owners of Covenant Art Glass on Broadway in Everett. After earning a master’s degree in glass art at Central Washington University, Stan Price studied and worked at Pilchuck Glass School in north Snohomish County. Price was the 2006 Artist of the Year in Snohomish County.
Kati Nickerson is the Village Theatre director of youth education. Nickerson became director of KidStage in the late 1990s. In Everett, she and her staff produce five youth musical theatre productions a year and have partnerships with schools and Imagine Children’s Museum. Nickerson believes Village’s KidStage gives young people theater skills and skills for life. Former students include Everett attorney Laura Baird, Broadway actor Caitlin Kinnunen and Justin Heurtas, who is in the current Village production of “In the Heights.”
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
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