Jasperites gathered at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and Archives, Sept. 26, to celebrate the people who make our arts community vibrant.
The fourth annual Raven About the Arts Awards honoured five local artists and two patrons of the arts, each of whom was presented with a flower and a custom fused-glass award made in Wildwood, Alta.
This year’s recipients were Marla Pollock (fine art), Brian Lackey (music), Shawna Woelke (choreography), Lena Fraser (theatre), Deb Joly (photography) and Sam and Shelley Koebel (patrons of the arts).
The award winners were selected by their peers for their willingness to share their work and knowledge with the community and for their ability to inspire others to participate in and appreciate the arts.
To save the artists the stress of standing on stage, each year Dave Baker interviews them ahead of the ceremony and creates a video showcasing each artist’s passions.
The evening began with a video of Brian Lackey, a talented guitar player and singer, who plays solo, as well as with his band Hundred Miles Across, which features last year’s Raven About the Arts award winner, Monika Schaefer, on violin.
Lackey explained in his interview that there is nothing he enjoys more than sitting down to play music, whether it’s in the kitchen with some friends, at a jam night or on stage.
“I play music with people at least once a week,” he said, adding that there are ample opportunities to play in Jasper. “It’s something that I’d like to continue to work at, I’d like to be a better musician ... and be as good a musician as I can be.”
Shawna Woelke is a hula-hooper and fire dancer, and this year’s recipient of the choreography award.
Woelke picked up hula hooping from a friend and has since started making her own hoops and teaching workshops, as well as performing at festivals.
“There’s so much more to hula-hooping than just hooping around the waist,” she said gushing about all that you can do with your body, whether it’s using multiple hoops at a time or incorporating fire.
Woelke’s talents are often visible on the Visitor Information Centre lawn or at festivals in the region, including the Jasper Folk Music Festival and Wild Mountain Music Festival.
Deb Joly—as well as being a fabulous Marilyn Monroe impersonator—is a local photographer, who started snapping photos when she was a teenager, as a way of keeping a visual diary.
Later in life, when she began working at the Palisades Stewardship Education Centre, Joly’s focus changed.
“My intention as well was to paint, so many of my photographs I have taken with an eye of how would this look as a painting,” she said, explaining her creative process.
Lena Fraser is a thespian. She has worked closely with the Jasper Theatre Company, either starring in plays—like A Christmas Carol—or directing them.
Her love of the stage began early, when she was a dancer and singer, and then in high school it led her to theatre.
“I love entertaining,” she said. “I love getting the reaction from people in the audience, and I love the challenge of being a completely different person than you are in your every day life.
“Being a part of theatre in Jasper is even more rewarding than being a part of theatre in a bigger city because you know everybody and it’s amazing to know that everyone in this community has come and filled the activity centre or filled the high school gym to come out and support us.”
Marla Pollock is a painter who creates vibrant acrylic paintings.
As a founding member of the Jasper Artists Guild, her work appears in the guild’s galleries, where it stands out from the rest, as something completely different; because unlike many of Jasper’s other painters, Pollock avoids landscapes.
“I have tried landscape painting and I seriously want to nap. I love the beauty of the mountains and the trees, the rivers and the rocks and I can feel their energy, but I’m never really called to paint them or capture their energy, never. It’s just mostly my imagination, my internal gaze.”
Shelley and Sam Koebel are the owners of the SnowDome Coffee Bar, and huge supporters of Jasper’s arts community.
As well as hosting numerous arts events within their shop each year, the Koebels also donated a space to the Jasper Artists Guild last winter.
For their commitment to the health of Jasper’s arts community, they were presented the patron of the arts award.
Nicole Veerman
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