2012 Artist Laureate Award Recipients

Arts Council Silicon Valley recognizes the region’s finest creative artists who are seriously committed to developing their art forms and to enriching our community with their exhibits, performances, presentations, and service.   Below are the recipients for the 2012 Artist Laureate.
 
2012 Artist Laureate Awards and categories:

• Legacy Laureate: Robert Kelley
• On The Wall: Kelly Detweiller
• Off The Wall: Chris Eckert
• On Stage:  Barbara Day Turner
• Off Stage:  Elizabeth McKenzie
• Emerging Artist: Jeffery Lo
  

Printer-friendly version
Press Release

---

 Legacy Laureate | Robert Kelley

Robert Kelley is a Bay Area native and Stanford University graduate. He founded TheatreWorks in 1970 and has been its Artistic Director throughout its growth into one of the nation’s leading professional theatres. He has directed over 150 TheatreWorks productions, including many world or regional premieres, and has received the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Paine Knickerbocker Award for lifetime achievement, eight BATCC Awards for Outstanding Direction, and two Garland Awards for directing from Back Stage West Magazine. Kelley has been a guest director for the California Shakespeare Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.  His recent TheatreWorks productions include The Secret Garden, Sense and Sensibility, Snow Falling on Cedars, and The 39 Steps.

theatreworks.org

 

 

---

On the Wall | Kelly Detweiler

Kelly Detweiler has been a part of the South Bay art scene for the past 30 years. He has taught at Santa Clara University for this entire period of time, 12 years as department chair. He has shown his work extensively in the region and has exhibited in Europe and the Far East. His work is in many private collections as well as the collections of the de Saisset Museum, the Triton Museum, Villa Heiss Museum (Germany), Microsoft Collection (Mountain View), Skowhegan Collection (Maine), and Nelson Gallery Collection (Davis, CA). This year he received the Joseph Bayma, S. J. Scholarship Award from the College of Arts And Sciences at Santa Clara University to honor his sustained research. In the next academic year he will be on sabbatical working on a new series of paintings to be exhibited in Korea. Detweiler received his BA from California State University at Hayward and his MFA Degree from UC Davis.

kellydetweiler.com

---

Off the Wall | Chris Eckert

Chris Eckert is an artist working in Silicon Valley, California.  His fastidiously crafted Art Machines use automation as a means of personal expression.  His sculptures have been shown throughout the United States and beyond including venues in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and Linz, Austria.  His machine Auto Masochist was recently featured on Nippon Television (a Japanese television network).  Eckert received his BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Santa Clara University and his MFA from San Jose State University. www.ChrisEckert.com

 

ChrisEckert.com

 

---

On Stage | Barbara Day Turner

Barbara Day Turner is the founder and music director of the San José Chamber Orchestra and an ardent advocate for new music. Since the orchestra was founded 20 years ago, she has commissioned and premiered more than 110 new works. Under her artistic directorship, San José Chamber Orchestra has been awarded three ASCAP/League of American Orchestras Awards for Adventurous Programming. Maestra Day Turner is also the music administrator and conductor of the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre where she has been resident conductor for the past 10 seasons and where she, most recently, led an all Gershwin concert as well as productions of Don Giovanni and South Pacific. She is in great demand as a guest conductor locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally.

 

More on Barbara 

---

Off Stage | Elizabeth McKenzie

Elizabeth McKenzie is the author of a collection, Stop That Girl, short-listed for The Story Prize, and the novel MacGregor Tells the World, a Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Library Journal Best Book of the year. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and recorded for NPR's Selected Shorts. She was an NEA/Japan US-Friendship Commission Fellow in 2010 and is Editor of the Chicago Quarterly Review. McKenzie received her MA from Stanford in English and Creative Writing.

 

macgregortells.com

 

---

Emerging Artist | Jeffrey Lo

Jeffrey Lo is the founding artistic director of San Jose’s 06 Ensemble where he wrote and directed A Kind of Sad Love Story, Barcelona Love Song and The Chase. His recent theater credits include serving as the assistant director for Superior Donuts, Snow Falling on Cedars, and The Pitmen Painters at TheatreWorks, The Last Romance at San Jose Rep, The Language Archive at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as well as various work on Turn of the Screw, Private Eyes, A Streetcar Named Desire, Sister Cities, Stones in His Pockets, Marvin's Room and Cat's Paw with Dragon Productions Theatre where he is the Artist-In-Residence. He is also the producer of the New Play Development Factory which highlights and develops the work of local Bay Area playwrights. Jeffrey received his BA in Theater and Literary Journalism from UC Irvine where he is the founding artistic director emeritus of The Pipeline Players. 

 

---

 2011 Artist Fellowship Recipients

• Shannon Amidon (Photography) San Jose
• Terry Berlier (Sculpture) La Honda
• David Perez (Spoken Word) Campbell
• PJ Hirabayashi (Music Performance) San Jose
• Karen Gabay (Choreography) San Jose

---

 

For further information, please contact:

Audrey Wong | Grants Program Manager
awong@artscouncil.org | 408-998-2787 ext. 214

Artist Laureate Awards are funded by a “Partners” consortium of funders, including the County of Santa Clara, California Arts Council, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.