Encouraging artists of all disciplines to consider a nomination, Brigadier General the Honourable J.J. Grant, CMM, ONS, CD (Ret’d), Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia said “Artists celebrate life and challenge us to appreciate the world around us. When I took office last year, I was very pleased to continue patronage of this prestigious award and anxious to meet the talented artists who make our province so culturally diverse. It has been exciting to get to know their work, be it in performance, on display in a gallery, on the internet or elsewhere and I look forward even more to this year.”

NSCAD professor Jan Peacock nominated Kim Morgan’s Rangelight Borden Carleton, PEI, 2010, for the 2012 Nova Scotia Masterworks Award, which won the $25,000 Prize. “I felt so strongly about Rangelight Borden-Carleton, PEI, 2010 that I wanted to do something that would seat it in the imaginations of all Nova Scotians,” said Peacock. “An achievement of this magnitude deserves to be celebrated.”  Kim Morgan would later say, “This is the first major public recognition of my work. The substantial financial award will enable me to launch another significant work of art… The Masterworks Award is public recognition of hard work, dedication and many leaps of faith.”

“This is a powerful incentive to nominate – to take the time to complete our nomination process”, said Susan Letson, Chair of the Masterworks Award Foundation Board. “I encourage everyone to appreciate the works of art, performances of art, art you see around you and to nominate the one that you consider a “Masterwork”.

The nomination form, with detailed guidelines updated for this year’s competition, is available from the website at www.nsmasterworks.ca.  Submissions must be postmarked on or before June 1, 2013.  The finalists and the winner are selected by an arm’s length jury of artists over the summer with presentation of the award in the fall.

The Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award is made possible by major funding from the Province of Nova Scotia.  The Foundation also gratefully acknowledges the support of The Craig Foundation, Scotiabank, Stewart McKelvey, and the Centre for Art Tapes.

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For further information:

Hannah Beck, Strategic Arts Management, 902-407-8885

E-mail: admin@nsmasterworks.ca

Molded in liquid latex from an actual navigation beacon, and illuminated from within so that it glows like a giant sea creature, Morgan’s Range Light is a three dimensional life-sized print of a moment in time and space. Jurors found it “monumental and magical….a moving statement about the fragility of life…breathtaking and mysterious.”

In presenting the winner with her certificate, Brigadier-General the Honourable J.J. Grant, CMM, ONS, CD (Ret’d), Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia commented: “The very high calibre of the artistry demonstrated in “Range Light” honours our maritime heritage and our cultural traditions. It is a truly wonderful addition to the growing number of Masterworks celebrated by this award.”

All of the finalists were honoured at a reception at Government House on Thursday afternoon. The other four received awards of $3000 each: The Debacle, a theatrical vision by Susan Leblanc and Anne-Marie Kerr; The Deluxe Edition of Departures and Returns, an elegant handmade book by Sandra Brownlee, J-Class Lounge Chair and Footstool, a fresh take on an ancient design based on the continuous-arm Windsor chair by Jonathan Otter; and Dinuk Wijeratne’s Tabla Concerto (2011), the first full-length concerto for tabla and western symphony orchestra.

Images of the winner and the finalists are on this website. The Award recognizes the excellence and creation of a particular work of art or performance of art, which has made a significant impact in its public presentation, and contributed to the historical development and contemporary practice of the art form. The work must have had its first public presentation within the past five years.

The Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award is made possible by major funding from the Province of Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia Masterworks Awards Foundation also gratefully acknowledges the
support of The Craig Foundation, Scotiabank, and Stewart McKelvey.

We recently announced five finalists for this year’s $25,000. prize. These exceptional artists will be featured in a panel discussion, moderated by last year’s Masterworks winner David Clark. This year’s finalists include works in theatre, craft, visual art and musical performance.

You are invited to join us for what promises to be an enlightening debate on the theme of “What does it take to create a masterwork?”

Media will have an opportunity to meet personally with the finalists directly after the discussion.

This event is presented in partnership by the Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award Foundation and NSCAD University.

Friday, September 28, 2012
12:00 noon to 1:30 pm
NSCAD Centre for Technology and Innovation
1061 Marginal Road, Halifax

Refreshments will be served

Please see the attached e-brochure for more information on our 2012 finalists and this event.

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Greg Silver Graphic Design
Gregory Silver, B Des, CGD, FGDC
PO Box 178
St. Peter’s, Nova Scotia
Canada B0E  3B0

Office 902 535 3990
Cell 902 631 5050

greg@gregsilver.ca

Nominator: Nate Crawford

The Debacle premiered in Halifax in April 2011 and played in Toronto in December of that year as part of the Nightwood Theatre’s Groundswell Festival. It is a co-creation of actor and Zuppa Theatre Artistic Director, Susan Leblanc and director, Ann-Marie Kerr. The program website: Festival TransAmérique, Montréal describes it this way. “Prostrate and dishevelled, Margaret is surrounded by hundreds of Mason jars containing childhood secrets. She slowly opens them one by one, gradually letting go of the chaos that haunts her. Exhausted by grief, she clings to fragments of memories that evoke a family that has disappeared. She must go back in time, into the panic and terror of memory, and try to recall moments of lost innocence.

Jury comment: “The Debacle, strong theatrical vision masterfully realized.”

Nominator: Bernhard Gueller

The Tabla Concerto (2011) is the first full length Tabla Concerto for tabla and full Western classical Symphony Orchestra. The world premiere performance took place on February 9, 2012 at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax at a concert produced by Symphony Nova Scotia conducted by SNS Music Director, Bernhard Gueller and featured tabla soloist,  Ed Hanley. It’s a fusion of Eastern and Western musical styles. Commisioned by Symphony Nova scotia and the Nova Scotia  Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage it was composed in three distinct movements (1. Canons, Circles; 2. Folk Song  “White in the moon the long road lies (that leads me from my love”; 3. Garland of Gems) that allowed each musical entity in the composer’s words “to preserve its own aesthetic”. It was recorded and received its broadcast premiere on CBC RADIO TWO on June 9. 2012.

Creator: Kim Morgan

Nominator: Jan Peacock

Range Light Borden-Carleton PEI 2010 breaks new ground by uniting Maritime imagery, history and change. A range light is one of a pair of beacons that align vertically when a ship keeps to a proper course. It`s mate was destroyed years ago. The remaining structure, just east of the Confederation Bridge at Borden-Carleton, served as a model and a mold. As with light houses in Nova Scotia it has become obsolete. But it has been preserved in a virtual sense, by encasing it in liquid latex, a month long process that when removed produced a kind of three dimensional life size print of a moment in time and space.  Illuminated from within, glowing like a giant sea creature it was exhibited at the Mount St. Vincent Art Gallery in October of 2010. On May 26, 2012, it opened at MASS MoCA, the largest contemporary art centre in the US at a continuing exhibition called Oh Canada.

Jury comments: “Range Light is monumental and magical.” “Range Light, past, present and future in an evocative new skin.” “The Range Light is a moving statement about the fragility of life.  Breathtaking and mysterious.” ”Range Light is monumental and magical.”

Nominator: Gary McCallum

J-Class Lounge Chair and Footstool is a fresh take on an ancient design. Based loosely on the arch back or continuous arm, Windsor chair, the artist encourages the art of relaxation by widening and lowering his lounge chair. All edges are soft and spindles are hand-shaped to fit the lumbar curve. The back`s graceful arc sweeps down to wide, supportive arms and the seat is deeply sculpted to cosset the sitter. The artist chose the highest quality raw material and brought them together in an artful manner.  The back crest is laminated from thin slices of black walnut from a single plank with invisible glue lines. The addition of a footstool completes the ensemble, the result of an estimated 15,000 hours of labouring at a workbench.

Jury comments: “The Chair is masterful fusion of tradition and innovation.” “J-Class Chair and Footstool made one juror want to sit down with a beer…and think of his own masterwork.”

Nominator: Prof. Robin E. Muller

Departures and Returns is a handmade book that was the centrepiece of an exhibition of the same name at the Mary E. Black Gallery in the autumn of 2009. Each of the 30 deluxe, handmade editions contains an original weaving by the artist in an envelope like endpaper. The book itself contains a six page centre leaf, the width of six pages, containing a photograph of her strip weavings. Individual pages are reminiscent of a child’s interactive picture book containing pages stitched with black thread, both delicate and detailed, as well as prints and texts that reflect her life as an artist and a human being. The deluxe edition is wrapped in a woven cover with facsimiles of the artist’s notebooks. With Sans Serif Studio she co-produced an additional 100 catalogue copies making the work more widely available.

Jury comments: “The Deluxe Edition is an elegant and personal book full of challenges and insights.”  “The exquisite craftsmanship of the book underlines the intimate artistic process but also provides the framework for the artworks included in it.”

A graduate of the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Oscar-Winner John Corigliano, Dinuk made his Carnegie Hall debut while still a student in 2004 performing with Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. Since then, Dinuk has composed specially for almost all of the artists and ensembles with whom he has performed; to name a few: Suzie LeBlanc, Joseph Petric, David Jalbert, Kinan Azmeh, Tim Garland, Victor Mendoza, Ed Thigpen, Ramesh Misra, Adrian Spillett, Kevork Mourad, Zakir Hussain, Christina Courtin, MIR, Skratch Bastid, Buck 65, the Apollo Saxophone Quartet, 4-Mality Percussion Quartet, the Afiara & Cecelia String Quartets, the New Juilliard Ensemble, Onelight Theatre, and Symphony Nova Scotia.

A passionate educator, Dinuk is Music Director of the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra and has lectured at the universities of Dalhousie and Acadia. He is the recipient of the 2008 Canada Council Jean-Marie Beaudet award for orchestral conducting; the 2011 Nova Scotia Established Artist Award; double Merritt Award nominations; Juilliard and Mannes scholarships; Countess of Munster composition grants; the Sema Jazz Improvisation Prize; the Soroptimist International Award for Composer-Conductors; and the Sir John Manduell Prize – the highest student honor of the Royal Northern College of Music.