GG’s Awards in the arts
The winners of the 2010 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts were announced by the Canada Council for the Arts last month at the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montreal.
Haida sculptor Robert Davidson, filmmaker André Forcier, painter Rita Letendre, video artist Tom Sherman, photographer Gabor Szilasi and painter Claude Tousignant won the awards for artistic achievement. Glass sculptor Ione Thorkelsson won the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in fine crafts, while Terry Ryan received the Outstanding Contribution Award as long-time general manager of West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative in Cape Dorset, Nunavut and director of Dorset Fine Arts in Toronto.
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April 2nd, 2010 at 10:00 am
I met Bob Davidson when he was a teenager in Vancouver. Bill Reid brought him around to a sculpture class I was taking and introduced him as a promising artist. Bill was his mentor at the time.
Probably 20 years later, I met Bob again, here in Toronto. He was helping with the ceremonial installation of his beautiful totem pole, inside the College Park complex at Yonge and College. We spoke briefly and I found him to be the same quiet, confident and intelligent person that I had been introduced to, years before.
I think Bob Davidson’s carvings rank aesthetically on par with the greatest works of sculpture that art history has to offer.