Here is the list of 2022 honorees:
Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books, Business Champion
Yoli Rose, Artist Champion
Nick Schwartz of Cider Creek Collective, Individual Champion
Molly Dwyer, Educator Champion
Deep Valley Arts Collective / MEDIUM Gallery, Arts Organization
Musician, songwriter, artist, jeweler—Yoli Rose is always up to something! She writes uplifting social/political songs, with humor and a danceable beat, that she performs with her rock-reggae-blues-psychedelic-and -punk band Redbud, a local favorite for over 2 decades. Redbud’s motto is “Think globally; dance locally!” Besides playing all around the county and beyond, they often play at benefits for non-profit groups. Yoli and her husband, Eagle Rose, create jewelry art and sculpture shown in fine galleries in California, Oregon and New Mexico, as well as at the Grace Hudson Museum, and was featured in Lapidary Journal. Yoli has taught at the Mendocino Art Center, and paints ceramics at Jan Hoyman Studio. Yoli is very supportive of the arts and music scene in Mendocino County.
Molly Dwyer has been an educator for over thirty years, teaching English composition and critical thinking in community colleges. Molly is currently adjunct faculty teaching creative writing at Mendocino College. She’s the founding president of Writers of the Mendocino Coast, and her debut novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, was shortlisted for the 2009 Northern California Book of Year. In 2010, the Mendocino County branch of the National Women’s Political Caucus honored Molly for “Writing Women Back into History.” Her nonfiction work, From Maidens to Mavericks: Mendocino Women, was published in 2017 by the Kelley House Museum. Her most recent novel, The Hall of Lost Footsteps, is a family saga based loosely on the ancestry of her birth family. Molly also coaches writers, edits manuscripts of all stripes, and facilitates workshops and critique groups.
Nick Schwartz was born in Manhattan, NY to a family embedded in the music industry, and was surrounded by artists for much of his childhood. After discovering clay in high school, he studied at a small liberal arts school in Florida, including traveling abroad for independent study in ancient cultures and their ceramics. After graduating, Nick traveled to Japan for an apprenticeship and then moved to Northern California and received a grant to build a community wood kiln. He founded a circus, made ceramics, baked bread, and developed and operated Flynn Creek Pottery for over a decade. Nick currently lives and works with his wife Jessica Rae Thompson, who is also a formidable ceramic artist. Together they are organizing a new art business known as Cider Creek Collective. The board of the Arts Council wishes to particularly honor Nick and the Cider Creek Collective for their support of emerging artists.
The Deep Valley Arts Collective formed early in the pandemic. They started with online exhibits to keep artists connected, and then created a physical space for that with the Medium Art Gallery in Ukiah. Resources and outlets for rural artists are often few and far between, or mired in steep commission fees. Medium Art Gallery supports artists by holding juried bi-monthly exhibitions without submission fees, hosting First Friday opening events where artists and art lovers are able to connect, and paying artists the full list value of artwork sold. Artists are also featured on their website and social media. They have fostered a welcoming space for artists of all backgrounds and levels of experience. In the words of an Arts Council board member, “They are doing an outstanding job, and filled a big gap.”
The Gallery Bookshop was established in Mendocino’s historic Jarvis-Nichols Building in 1962. Three expansions, four owners, and six decades later, Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books serves local residents and visitors from around the world with an extensive inventory of current titles, plus a large selection of eclectic volumes seldom found elsewhere. In addition to a deep selection of classics and new releases, the bookstore prominently features sections on local history, science, ocean life, mushrooms, the arts, and books and artwork by local authors and artists. Its dedicated, book-loving staff, led by owner Christie Olson Day, provides an extraordinary community service as a team effort to connect readers to books through recommendations, personal service, community events, subscription boxes, book giveaways, and outreach programs.
The Mendocino County Arts Champion Awards are annually announced in the fall to coincide with National Arts and Humanities Month, a coast-to-coast celebration of culture in America.
A reception for the 2020, 2021, and 2022 honorees will be held in Spring 2023. To receive an alert about the reception and other Arts Council of Mendocino County programs, including a county-wide calendar of cultural events, visit www.artsmendocino.org and sign up for ArtsWeekly.
The most up-to-date meeting materials for the Board of Supervisors can be found here.