2013 Winners

Visual Arts: Crystal Przybille

Crystal Pryzbille resides in Kelowna and has exhibited works across both Canada and Europe. She has received multiple grants for her art, including grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council. Crystal has also produced public artworks, including The Father Pandosy Mission 150th Anniversary Commemorative Sculpture, The Hands of Time for the City of Victoria, and Illuminature for the City of Kelowna.

Dance: Vicki View

Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Vicki View is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer in a wide range of genres (including jazz, lyrical, hip hop, and ballet). Vicki has worked extensively in film and television, and she is also a choreographer and adjudicator for the International Dance Seminar of Brasilia and the National Dance Championships of Canada.

Music: Craig Thomson

Craig Thomson is an award-winning saxophonist and educator. Craig attended Capilano University and the University of British Columbia to pursue a career in both music performance and music education. The career choice has culminated in Craig becoming the coordinator for the BC Interior Jazz Festival, an annual three-day educational event that brings together 1500 students from across North America to connect them with the knowledge of the continent’s most well-renowned music professionals.

Literary Arts: Sterling Hayes

Theatre: Matt Brown

Design: Trevor Butler

Arts Educator: Michelle Loughery

Michelle Loughery is an artist, organiser, and educator who has worked in community public art for 25 years and has created over 200 large-scale mural, over 20 community mural projects, including Route 66 Mural City, Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame’s Mural Project, Downtown Vernon BC’s Mural Project. Working with inter-generational groups, teens, elders, and children, Loughery draws on her rich experiences in rural Canada to portray a wide variety of historic and contemporary scenes in her murals.

COF Community Arts Award: Creator’s Arts Centre

Creator’s Arts Centre is R.A.D. certified dance school that operates as non-profit charitable society. CAC is the only charitable dance school in the Okanagan that provides opportunities for children from low-income families to receive tuition assistance and believe that dance education trains the future generation to “creative, disciplined, motivated, compassionate, intelligent members of our community.”

Media Arts: David McIlvride

With more then 30 years of experience in the film and television industry, David McIlvride is a media artist based in the Okanagan. Boasting 2 Gemini Awards to his name, David frequently works with partner Alison Love at Spatula Media + Communications to produce media that flourishes in the ever-changing media landscape.

Supporter of the Arts: Robert MacDonald

A typographer by trade, Robert MacDonald has substantial practical, hands-on experience in graphic and typographic design for print and interactive media, editorial development, advertising creative, copywriting, consumer and professional marketing, and business development. He has consulted at a senior level, and provided creative and management services, to museums and art galleries, government departments, education institutions, public service organizations and associations, publishing media and software companies, and enterprises in the travel, product distribution, packaged goods, professional services, software and technology sectors. He is an active community volunteer, and has served as a board member of the Central Okanagan Hospice Association, Vision North Okanagan, Okanagan Network for the Environment, Okanagan Media Alliance and Society for Learning in Retirement. He is the Publisher in Residence at Okanagan College, and is the founding director of the Okanagan Institute and the CoCo Laboratory.

Lifetime Achievement: Robert Dow Reid

Robert Dow Reid was born in Scotland and has always been heavily influenced by the sea. His grandfather was a sea captain, and he, himself, became a whaler back in the forties and fifties, when whalers traveled to remote corners of the globe, such as Antarctica. Robert is best known for his sculpture, Spirit of Sail, a 12 metre (40 foot), 1820 kilogram (4000 pound) Fibreglas work of art installed on Kelowna’s waterfront at the foot of Bernard Avenue. He is also widely known for his monumental sculptures in Regina, Vancouver, Surrey and Kasugai, Japan.