The Sunshine Coast Arts Council presented its 2018 awards in Sechelt on Oct. 25, honouring local artists and, for the first time, also recognizing community leadership in the arts.
The winner of the Louise Baril Memorial Music Award was violinist Hanna Crudele, who grew up playing with a variety of groups on the Sunshine Coast and is currently in her fourth year of violin performance at the University of Ottawa.
The Anne and Philip Klein Visual Arts Award went to accomplished photographer, printmaker and now fibre artist Eugenia Stephenson, whose exhibition Painting with Fibre was held this fall at the Sechelt Arts Centre.
Timothy Niebergall was the recipient of the Gillian Lowndes Award, given to an artist for long-standing achievement, innovation and recent growth in their field. An Arts Council release described Niebergall as “a multi-faceted artist who continues to develop in his chosen areas of architectural ceramics, carpentry and music.”
This year, a fourth honour was presented for the first time: the Frances Wasserlein Community Leadership in Arts and Culture Award. It goes to Linda Williams, an organizer of the annual Art Crawl, a founder of the Coast Cultural Alliance, and whose volunteerism also extends to the Gibsons Jazz Festival, the Sunshine Coast Tourism Board, and Music in the Landing.
The awards are made possible by grants from the Sunshine Coast Community Foundation.
