Ottawa, May 22, 2013 – The Canada Council for the Arts today announced the seven award-winning and internationally renowned artists who will receive the 2013 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Awards. Writer Trevor Cole; contemporary puppeteer and puppet designer and maker Julie Desrosiers; creative leader, director and choreographer in the field of dance Sandra Laronde; filmmaker Lindsay McIntyre; playwright Donna-Michelle St. Bernard; sculptor and installation artist Reece Terris; and jazz musician Ben Wendel are this year’s winners.
The $15,000 annual awards recognize mid-career artists in the seven disciplines and arts practices funded by the Canada Council: writing and publishing, integrated arts, dance, media arts, theatre, visual arts and music. The prizes were created using funds from a generous bequest made by the late Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton to the Canada Council. The winners were chosen from the pool of applicants from the Grants to Professional Artists programs during the 2012-13 fiscal year.
“These seven mid-career artists have already established themselves as some of this country’s best, and we know they will create exciting work in the years ahead,” said Canada Council Director and CEO Robert Sirman. “The Canada Council for the Arts applauds their creativity and hopes that this prize encourages and inspires them to new heights.”
Download images of the winners and their works.
Trevor Cole
Trevor Cole has worked with words all his adult life, from his days as a young radio copywriter to his 14-year career as an editor and journalist with The Globe and Mail. His first novel, Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life, published in 2004, garnered critical acclaim. It was shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book (Can-Carib region). It was also longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His second novel, The Fearsome Particles, was published in 2006. It was also a Governor General’s Literary Award finalist and longlisted for the IMPAC. Published in 2010, Practical Jean is his third novel. It was shortlisted for the Rogers Writer's Trust Fiction Prize and won the 2011 Leacock Medal for Humour. Trevor Cole lives in Toronto.
Julie Desrosiers
Julie Desrosiers is puppeteer and puppet designer and maker with a visual arts and scenography background. With much research and great attention to detail, she creates and handles visual worlds where different art forms and objects meet. Based in the Montreal area, she presents her personal creations, including Punzelle, Cabaret des curiosités and Entre 2, to various audiences in Quebec and around the world, in France, Spain and Island. She collaborates with companies such as the Théâtre de la Dame de Cœur, La Méta-Carpe, and the Cirque du Soleil for many dance, circus and theatre shows, as a performer or visual artist. She is currently working on a project called Les Bois dormants, which will be available in October 2013.
Sandra Laronde
Sandra Laronde is an innovator in the artistic and cultural sector and has worked as a director, producer, performer and creative leader for over 18 years. In 2000, she founded Red Sky Performance, Canada's leading company in contemporary indigenous performance in dance, theatre and music. In 2011, she received an honorary degree from Trent University and the Expressive Arts Award from The Smithsonian Institute. The previous year, Red Sky won a Dora Mavor Moore Award and two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards. Sandra's world stage line-up includes the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad, 2010 World Expo Shanghai in China, and the John F. Kennedy Center, among others. Currently, she is the Director of Indigenous Arts at The Banff Centre. Sandra Laronde is originally from the Teme-Augama-Anishnaabe (People of the Deep Water) in Temagami, northern Ontario.
Lindsay McIntyre
Lindsay McIntyre is a film artist and creator from Edmonton, Alberta. Specializing in analogue film work that emphasizes documentary, experimental and handmade techniques, her work has been shown at national and international festivals and venues and won awards. Her short films circle themes including portraiture, place and form. They include How to Make a Phantastik Film (2003), though she never spoke, this is where her voice would have been (2008) and all-around junior male (2012). She also does film projection performance. Lindsay McIntyre completed an MFA degree in Film Production at Concordia University in Montreal and holds a BFA in drawing and painting from the University of Alberta. She has also studied at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in England and at the New School in New York.
Donna-Michelle St. Bernard
Donna-Michelle St. Bernard is an emcee, playwright, director and arts administrator working for change through the arts. Notable works for the stage include Salome’s Clothes, Give It Up and Cake. Her play Gas Girls was a Governor General’s Literary Award finalist (2011), won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding new play, an Enbridge PlayRites Award at Calgary Theatre Projects, and earned second place in the Herman Voaden Playwriting Competition. She has also been playwright-in-residence at Obsidian Theatre, lead vocalist for Belladonna & the Awakening, and general manager of Native Earth Performing Arts. She has been involved with the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, the Toronto Arts Council Theatre Committee, Artsvote 2010 and DiverseCity Fellows. Donna-Michelle St. Bernard is now a vocalist with ergo sum and artistic director of New Harlem Productions in Toronto.
Reece Terris
Reece Terris is a Vancouver-based artist whose work alters the expected experiential qualities of a place or object through an amplification or shift in the primary function of an original design. Past projects include a six-storey apartment building installed in the rotunda of the Vancouver Art Gallery, a pedestrian wooden bridge connecting two residential homes, and an architectural false front added to the existing false front of an artist-run centre. His practice is manifest through a variety of media, including sculpture, performance, installation, and photography. Reece Terris graduated from Simon Fraser University in 2005 and is a recipient of the VIVA award. He has had solo and group exhibitions at venues such as the Vancouver Art Gallery; The Western Front, Vancouver; and The Power Plant, Toronto. His project Good-Bye Work was most recently featured in the exhibition Catagenisis in Philadelphia.
Ben Wendel
Grammy-nominated musician Ben Wendel was educated at the Eastman School of Music in New York City, where he now lives. Since graduating he has enjoyed a varied career as a performer, composer, producer and most recently, conductor. Highlights include multiple domestic and international tours with such artists as Cuban drumming legend Ignacio Berroa, Hip Hop artist Snoop Dogg and the Artist formerly known as Prince. Ben is a founding member of the Grammy nominated group Kneebody and is also an award-winning composer and a frequent writer of film music. Ben also worked with conductor Kent Nagano on a series of concerts for the Festpeil Plus in Munich, Germany. Since 2008, Ben has produced Under The Radar, a multi-genre performance series at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California.
General information
The Canada Council for the Arts is Canada’s national arts funder. Its grants to artists and arts organizations contribute to a vibrant arts scene in Canada. Its awards celebrate creativity by recognizing exceptional Canadians in the arts, humanities and sciences. The Canada Council Art Bank is a national collection of over 17,000 Canadian contemporary artworks – all accessible to the public through rental, loan and outreach programs. The Canadian Commission for UNESCO operates under the general authority of the Canada Council.
