2003 K.M. Hunter Artist Awards Recipients Announced

Toronto [May 5, 2003] – The K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation announced today the recipients of the 2003 K.M. Hunter Artist Awards. Every year awards in the amount of $8,000 each are given to artists in the fields of dance, literature, music, theatre and the visual arts. Presented at a critical moment in the artists’ career, the Awards are intended to provide the support and encouragement that will propel them to the next level. 

ìThis year’s recipients are prime examples of what these awards are all about: imagination, originality and the determination to achieve. We look forward to watching these artists flourish in their craft,î says Martin Hunter, President of the K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation. 

The 2003 K.M. Hunter Artist Awards Recipients are:

LESANDRA DODSON   Dance Award
SHEILA HETI                Literature Award
GREG A. HILL              Visual Arts Award
DAVID McFARLANE     Visual Arts Award
KELLY McINTOSH        Theatre Award
JAMES ROLF               Music Award
SANTEE SMITH            Dance Award 

Since the inception of the K.M. Hunter Artist Awards in 1995, over thirty artists have received the Award, and gone on to establish themselves in their chosen fields. Previous recipients include Lois Andison, Ken Babstock, Dennis Bock, Marie-Josée Chartier, Eve Egoyan, Alice Ho, Allan Kaeja, Alon Nashman, Ross Manson, Yvonne Ng and Martin Tielli. 

Candidates for the Awards are Ontario artists who have completed their professional training, begun to produce a body of work and are making a significant mark in their field. Recipients have been short-listed by juries from the Ontario Arts Council granting programs based on demonstrated talent and the potential for further development. A panel of distinguished artists then selects the winners. 

The Awards will be presented on Monday, May 5, 2003 at the Indian Motorcycle Club. The evening will be hosted by renowned tv personality Laurie Brown and will feature award presentations by distinguished artists from each field: Susanna Hood and Yvonne Ng (dance), Joseph Maviglia (literature), Linda Catlin Smith (music), Judith Thompson (theatre) and Andy Fabo (visual arts).  

About K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation

Established in 1985 by Kenneth Martin Hunter, the K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation is now managed by his two sons, Martin Hunter and W.T. Hunter, with assistance of their wives and several younger members of the family.  The Foundation was originally established to subsidize projects in medical research and funded certain social agencies such as the United Way and the Salvation Army.  The Foundation continues to provide financial support in these fields and is also concerned with projects in the areas of nature conservancy, international development, and cultural activities.

THE K. M. HUNTER ARTIST AWARDS

Recognizing the Future of Art

Administered by Martin Hunter and Sarah Hunter in conjunction with the Ontario Arts Council, the K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation presents the K.M. Hunter Artist Awards in the categories of dance, literature, music, theatre and the visual arts. The amount of the Award in each discipline is $8,000. 

Launched in 1995, the K.M. Hunter Artist Awards are given annually to Ontario residents who have completed their training, begun to produce a body of work and are starting to make a significant mark in their field. Our goal is to award individuals who demonstrate imagination, originality, as well as the potential and determination to achieve. The Awards are presented at a critical moment in the artists’ career, as a means of encouraging their craft and propelling them to the next level. We are concerned with supporting and rewarding artists who we believe will go on to produce great work. 

The K.M. Hunter Artist Award was inspired by an award I received in my early thirties that helped me realize I should take myself seriously as an artist and continue extending and developing my craft. If the majority of the recipients of the K.M. Hunter Artist Awards do the same, the Awards have achieved their purpose.

                            The K. M. Hunter Charitable Foundation 

The K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation was established in 1985 by Kenneth Martin Hunter, a Toronto businessman who had a successful career as a paper merchant, becoming president and principal shareholder of the Buntin Reid Paper Company Limited. Since the death of K.M. Hunter in 1992, the Foundation has been managed by his two sons, Martin Hunter and W.T. Hunter, with the assistance of their wives and several younger members of the family.

Initially the Foundation subsidized projects in medical research and funded certain social agencies such as the United Way and the Salvation Army. It has also supported a major learning and research project for The Hospital for Sick Children. Today, while the Foundation continues to provide financial support in these fields, it is also concerned with projects in the areas of nature conservancy, international development and cultural activities. 

2003 K. M. HUNTER ARTIST AWARDS

Recipient Biographies

LESANDRA DODSON has danced with Le Groupe de la Place Royale in Ottawa, Dance Collective, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and Trip Dance Company, of which she is a founding member. Lesandra has toured in Asia, Europe, the United States and Canada. She has blended choreography and film production to create works for Bravo!, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Global TV and Pix Chix Productions. She has created three full-length evenings, ìyou, your 8 lives and me,î ìWithout Mythologiesî and ìWhat common language to unravel.î She is currently working on a piece in which Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers will collaborate with Mexico’s Delfos Dance Company, in addition to choreographing for DanceWorks, Four Chambers Dance Project and the newly formed Tilt Sound+Motion.  

SHEILA HETI is the author of The Middle Stories,published by Anansi in 2001 when she was twenty-four years old. It was released in the following year in America by McSweeney’s Books and has been translated into French, German, Spanish and Dutch. As a journalist she writes about the visual arts, is currently working on a novel and collaborating on a musical for Nightwood Theatre with musician Daniel Bejar and artist Marcel Dzama. She runs the Trampoline Hall lecture series in Toronto and New York.  

GREG A. HILL is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in installation, performance and digital imaging. As a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation he continues to explore his Mohawk (Kanyen’kehaka) and French Canadian identities. He is Assistant Curator of Art at the National Gallery of Canada where his work includes Art of This Land, an installation of aboriginal works of art. His own work has been shown in galleries across Canada, as well as in the United States, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain and Hong Kong and he is represented in several Canadian collections and private collections in the U.S. and Germany. 

DAVID McFARLANE has combined sculpture, installation and performance to create a variety of original works exploring the practice of mapping and collecting as a strategy to examine issues of identity, territory and boundary. His work has been shown at Phoebe Street Project and Wanton Optica  and other Toronto galleries, I.D.A. Gallery at York University, Neutral Ground in Regina, Truck Gallery in Calgary, Walter Phillips Gallery in Banff and Galerie Oboro in Montreal. He is a multi-instrumental musician and has performed in Ontario and Quebec as a solo artist and with various ensembles. He also works with core web and multi-media to develop web-based graphic interface design and implementation. He is currently developing a web-based work entitled www.davidmcfarlane.com, which will launch in the fall of 2003. 

KELLY McINTOSH has appeared as an actor in theatres across the country, most notably in Greek by Stephen Berkoff mounted by Wild Pig Theatre and The Juniper Tree by Maristella Roca and Allen Cole. She was Associate Artist-in-Residence with Caravan Farm Theatre in the Okanagan Valley for several years, where she produced her first play The Bremen Town Band adapted from the Brothers Grimm with music by Allen Cole. She has worked as dramaturge, director and/or choreographer with Layne Colemen, Peter Hinton, Josephine Le Grice, Ross Manson and Paul Thompson. She is currently playwright-in-residence at Blyth where she performed her one woman show The Strange and Surprising Worlds of Bridget Donnelly and is writing music for her new show Hippie. She will perform in this work and in Anne Chislett’s The Perilous Pirate’s Daughter at this year’s Blyth Festival.

JAMES ROLFE is a freelance composer whose work has been commissioned and performed by Canadian ensembles Arraymusic, Esprit, Soundstreams and Vancouver New Music Society as well as Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Cassatt Quartet in the United States, various European groups: Contrechamps de Geneve, Ensemble Avant Garde, the Ives, Ixion and Nash Ensembles and 175 East in New Zealand. In 1997 his workFÍtes de la Faim was performed at ISCM World Music Days in Seoul, Korea. His first opera Beatrice Chancy played to sold-out houses when produced by The Queen of Puddings Music Theatre in Toronto, Dartmouth and Edmonton from 1998 to 2001 and was also filmed and broadcast by CBC TV. An orchestral work for young audiences Mechanical Danny featuring a story written and narrated by poet Dennis Lee premiered in 2001. He is currently collaborating on a new opera, Charlotte, with filmmaker Jeremy Podeswa and works for marimbist Nancy Zeltsman, timpanist Frederic Macarez, accordionist Joseph Petric and the Elora Festival Singers.  

SANTEE SMITH is a member of the Mohawk Nation, Turtle Clan from Six Nations and works as choreographer, dancer, singer and native pottery designer. She choreographed two dance pieces Sky Woman and Three Sisters for The Gift, an NFB documentary as well as dances for See and Hear the World, a documentary aired on BRAVOTV and has participated as dancer and choreographer in Chinook Winds at The Banff Centre for the Arts. She performed the role of First Woman in the world premier of BONES, an Aboriginal dance opera. She has been a guest teacher for Children’s Dance Theatre, Six Nations Youth Outreach Program and York University. She is currently working on a piece titled Kaha:wi – She Carries, from  which she has performed sections in Jakarta, Indonesia, the Iroquois Festival in New York and on the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network.  A full-scale production of this work will be performed in February 2004.  

2003 K.M. HUNTER ARTIST AWARDS

 Presenters

ANDY FABO is a visual artist who has been working and exhibiting in Toronto for over twenty years. Originally identified with the Chromosome Group he has increasingly experimented in multimedia to exploit his wide knowledge of art history and continuing interest in gay experience. 

SUSANNA HOOD is a previous K.M. Hunter Artist Award winner. She has danced and choreographed solo pieces and has collaborated with various groups throughout Canada and Europe. 

JOSEPH MAVIGLIA is a Juno award-winning poet and songwriter whose work deals with political themes and makes use of the folksong tradition. He has been published in Canada, the United States and Europe and has recently produced a book, freakin’ palomino blue.  

YVONNE NG was the winner of the K.M. HunterArtist Award for Dance in 2002. As a performer and choreographer she collaborates with a number of cutting-edge groups in Toronto, as well as produces work through her own company Princess Productions.

LINDA CATLIN SMITH is a former winner of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Music and the composer of a number of orchestral works. Her first opera Facing South was recently premiered as part of the Harbourfront World Theatre Festival.

JUDITH THOMPSON is one of Canada’s foremost playwrights. Since her initial success with The Crackwalker she has had many plays produced in Canada and the United States, including Lion in the Streets and Perfect Pie, which was also made into a film.  Her newest play will be presented at the Tarragon Theatre next season. 

K.M. HUNTER ARTIST AWARDS

Past Recipients 

Over thirty artists have received the K.M Hunter Artist Awards since their inception in 1995. A number of them have gone on to distinguish themselves in their creative fields, including: 

DANCE
Allen Kaeja 
Susanna Hood
Marie-Josée Chartier
Yvonne Ng
Kim Frank
Carmen Romero

LITERATURE
Nalo Hopkinson
Peter Darbyshire
Dennis Bock
Gary Barwin
Nalo Hopkinson
Daniel Nearing
Sasenarine Persaud
Norman Ravvin
Ken Babstock

MUSIC
Alice Ho
Andrea Koziol
Linda Catlin Smith
Phil Dwyer
Eve Egoyan
Martin Tielli

THEATRE
Alon Nashman
Erika Hennebury
Ruth Madoc-Jones
Ross Manson
Peter Reitzel & Julie Reitzel

VISUAL ARTS
Kelly Mark
Shary Boyle
Susan Dobson
C. Grace Kary
Paul Safarian
Lois Andison
Janet Morton
Florencia Berinstein