Awards Presentation 2007
Once again our Awards Show was a huge success, bringing our artists and their fans together for an evening full of the spirit of our collective. We would like to thank everyone who came out in support of our artists and their amazing accomplishments!!
The event would not have been possible without the sponsorship of Reversible Eye Gallery, Erickson Design and Cattails.
A very special thanks to all of the guest musicians who performed with our artists: Shaye Cohn, Brandon Davis and Ronnie Malley.
If you were unable to attend or you would like to again read the awards given to each artist, they are listed here.
BOBBY VERRAN
Bobby is one of those people that if you weren’t introduced to, you might not think you needed to know or wanted to meet. He appears to be someone who keeps to himself and isn’t interested in the people or things around him. What Bobby has taught us about himself, is that he is the exact opposite of what we might think if we didn’t take the time to get to know him. Bobby’s shown us the art of listening and quietly observing, of how important it is to meet people where they are and move forward together from that new starting point. He has taught us that people move at their inner pace and that moving slowly is still moving. Bobby has shown everyone in our community a very warm and sincere acceptance of who we all are and has helped us embrace the goodness in each other. After the summer break, Bobby decided he was moving forward and looking at his artwork and his life in a new light. We all love his new work and love him. It is our great pleasure to honor Bobby tonight with the TEACHING AWARD.
DEBBIE VASQUEZ
For such a small woman, Debbie has some strength behind her, both physical, as we’ve seen when she carries windows and pieces of plywood that are twice her size from one end of the studio to the other, and emotional, as we’ve seen when she works so hard to process information that helps her understand her world better. And she is so generous with her strength. She’s happy to help bring paintings, donations or supplies inside, she’s happy to help her friends with the trash, which again is twice her size, and she’s happy to move things around to make other people more comfortable. Debbie is also a very concerned friend, taking time out of her day to check in with the people she cares about and make sure they are okay. Supporting her friends through rough times, remembering birthdays, babies and anniversaries, Debbie’s strength is one of the many threads that hold our community together. It is our great pleasure to honor Debbie with the STRENGTH AWARD.
LILLIAN COFFILL
Each year I try to find a new way to talk about the life Lillian has and how desperately we all try to fit the studio into her day. The award is always different and often focuses on the progress she has made or her artwork taking on new materials or meaning or her clever personality. But I find that at the end of the award, I’m usually either begging Lilly to join us or I’m apologizing for begging Lilly to join us. We really do love the rare glimpses we get into the true Lillian and we spend a lot of time trying too hard for the next glimpse. Not only is she a remarkable art maker, she’s a funny, charming and thoughtful friend. And she’s feisty, sometimes reckless, and constantly pushing the envelope. The one thing that stands out this year is her enthusiasm. No matter what she was doing or how reckless, Lilly was consistently enthusiastic in her methods. It is our great pleasure to honor Lillian with the ENTHUSIASM AWARD.
LINDA RUZGA
Linda is the one of those people that doesn’t let you in immediately, but once you’ve become one of “her people”, she’ll do whatever she can to help you out. She’s an old soul and once she’s chosen you as one of her own, she is determined to assist you to achieve the life you want. And she models that determination in her everyday life, through her artwork, her presence in our community and her self-advocacy. She may appear to be laid back, but when she wants something, she wants it and when she wants you to have something, she wants you to have something. No grey areas for Linda. Just those she loves and those she doesn’t love yet. Because of her big heart and never ending ideas on art and life, Linda began a large-scale piece on canvas that takes up the whole back garage door. It is very exciting for the rest of us to watch her tackle something so large and know that it is only the beginning of very grand things for Linda; we are looking forward to seeing where her determination takes her next. It is our great pleasure to honor Linda with the DETERMINATION AWARD.
MARK GERMANOS
Mark is someone who has just about everything figured out, just ask him. He knows what he needs and anticipates what he might need in the future. He knows what the studio wants and spends many hours of his and my life making sure I don’t forget what the studio wants. And if you know what you want and can anticipate what you might need, you can imagine that Mark wouldn’t really think he had much to learn. Not that he is pompous, because he’s not, just ask him, but rather that he has systems and they work. What we saw this year though, was how much Mark respects Ryan and how much he loves that he hired Ryan and Nick and that he trained them and that, because of Mark’s leadership, Ryan and Nick are also successful in our community. What we also saw is Mark thinking that if they could learn from him, maybe he could learn from them. And he started talking again about his art making process and about his vision as an artist and about what he needs in the future. We’ve seen Mark embrace both teacher and student this year. And it is our great pleasure to honor Mark with the LEARNING AWARD.
MIKE MARINO
Mike and his mother, Kathy, worked very hard to enable him to join our community. He is someone who is really embracing the idea that he can work wherever he wants and possibly two or three places, so he only joins our community twice a week. But once he is with us, we find that he is a very deliberate art maker and that he has been looking for a studio like ours to both come together within a community of artists and be left alone to create his work. He is open to learning new things and is happy to participate in all aspects of the work we do at the studio. And once you know Mike, you get a sense that he comes from a long line of people with strong work ethic, solid values, and a great pride in the human spirit. It is our great pleasure to honor Mike with the INTEGRITY AWARD.
KATHY MCDONALD
“I’m here, Janet,” she sings as she strides into the building. Who’s Janet? I’m Janet. And Ryan is Brian and the list goes on in her life. But if you know Kathy, you know that finding new names is only one of her charms. She is so gentle and so sweet and so inquisitive. And then she’s so naughty and so bold. And then she’s so sincere and so thoughtful. Kathy has been both interesting and fun to watch and help get to know the studio. It is obvious that she enjoys art making, as much as she enjoys anything, except pop, for any amount of time. But what she most likes to do is make sure everyone and everything is all right. She spends much of her day asking her friends if they are okay and talking about the things that she does that may bother others while they are trying to work. And she is so sincere when she asks, “I like to talk a lot, I know that, what can I do?” We miss her spunk on Wednesdays when she works at the Buzz Café in Oak Park and look forward to watching her grow as an artist and a person. In is our great pleasure to honor Kathy with the PERSONALITY AWARD.
SILVIA RAMIREZ
Not since Ronnie have we had someone join our community and want to come in earlier and stay later then we have the hours for and make art the whole time. Not that she isn’t part of the community, because Silvia is happy to help out with the other piece; the running of our little collective. But what she most wants to do is get her images out onto the boards and the windows. And she worked very hard to join our community, refusing to go to her last placement and waiting almost a year between visits to the studio in order to understand how the studio works and make the right decision. For only being with the studio a short while, Silvia has some great accomplishments. She wrote the story of the work she did to join our studio that was published through Illinois Voices, She had her first Gallery show here at Reversible Eye during December and January, and her work was very well received and Carl Hammer Gallery represented her at New York City’s Outsider Art Fair. This is what we at the studio call a Rock Star and it is our great pleasure to honor Silvia tonight with the ROCK STAR AWARD.
FRANCES ROBERTS
Frances wasn’t sure she could make art when she joined our studio. She wasn’t sure she could give up Judge Mathis and Jerry Springer either, but she threw caution to the wind and said if we had coffee, she’d give it a try. And she is a wonderful artist. The more art she does and the more she learns about art making, the more she wants to try new things. Within three weeks, she hardly missed her shows and was comfortable at her new workspace within her new community. What we’ve seen with Frances is the more she learns about art, the more she learns about herself. The more she opens up with her art making, the more she opens up and becomes aware of what she wants for herself. We are still waiting for Frances to tell us what she wants and how we can help, but she is well on her way to the life she’s kept inside for so long. Because of all her efforts, it is our great pleasure to honor Frances with the SELF-AWARENESS AWARD.
JAN ZABEL
Jan is such a genuine and sweet person, who is always so thoughtful of others that it breaks your heart when she isn’t herself. Jan is a role model for keeping your chin up and taking responsibility for making your day wonderful. Very rarely, the whole time we’ve known Jan, have we seen her unhappy. But this has been an especially hard year for Jan and we want her to know how much we love her and how sorry we feel for her loss. Her husband died over the past year and, as we could all expect, some days are great, some days are good, and some days just plain stink! Jan has tried to be dignified and respectful to the memory of Leroy as she works through her grief, but we know how much she misses him and how she wishes some things had gone differently. But even in her darkest moments, Jan is someone who will always fight for her beliefs with both conviction and grace. We are soo sorry Jan and we love you!! It is our great pleasure to honor Jan with the BRAVERY AWARD.
KELLY STONE
When we first started working with Kelly, he wasn’t talking really. He would answer questions with “yeah” or “no”, but it always seemed like he was more interested in getting you out of his space then the words he was using. And he would give you honest answers to questions that weren’t yes/no, but he never gave any of us the impression he was interested in talking, in really having a conversation. So, we, LEEDA and us, were sort of left to put ourselves in Kelly’s shoes and see what we might like once we stood in them for a while. Well, once we were there, we were right about 50% of the time, which made Kelly happy and more engaged in his life. And we were wrong about 50% of the time, which made Kelly worried but also more engaged in his life. We aren’t sure when it happened, but at some point Kelly began to realize that the more information he gave us and the less we had to guess, the more we were right and he was happy. This relationship of guessing and questioning and being right and being wrong took a remarkable shift this year. Kelly began to initiate conversations about things he liked, didn’t like, wanted and didn’t want. We are no longer guessing, but just asking and sometimes we aren’t even asking. We are very proud of Kelly Stone and look forward to future conversations that change his life. It is our great pleasure to honor Kelly Stone with the INDEPENDENCE AWARD.
LATOYA WEATHERSBY
The self-advocacy movement is (in basic terms) about people with disabilities speaking up for themselves. It means that although a person with a disability may call upon the support of others, the individual is entitled to be in control of their own resources and how they are directed. It is about having the right to make life decisions without undue influence or control by others. This is what Latoya has been working on this past year, balancing her desire to receive opinions from others and her desire to take control of her life. We are happy to help Latoya as she learns more about advocacy and more about the life she wants for herself. We know as long as she keeps moving at least two steps forward to every one step back, she’ll get there. Because of her efforts so far, it is our pleasure to honor Latoya with the SELF-ADVOCACY AWARD.
CHRISTINA ZION
We were worried about Chrissy when we first started working with her. She was really friendly and helpful and already a fantastic art maker, but she has this receptive language delay that makes it hard to communicate with her, at least that is what we thought. What we have found, is that Chrissy really loves the studio, she really enjoys the companionship of her friends, she really wants to learn and grow and move forward and she wants these things for others as well. She is very proud of her successes and very humble as she learns new things, which is a wonderful combination for our community. Chrissy is the first artist who went through orientation and made mental notes of concerns and actively worked on them to show her commitment and her progress. She is an example of the work of the studio, building community through art, and we are so proud of her great strides in such a short time. It is our pleasure to honor Christina with the MOST IMPROVED ARTIST AWARD.
VERONICA “GRANNY” “RONNIE” CUCULICH
We love Ronnie. I’ve said that a million times, but it doesn’t really tell you exactly how we feel about her. We call her granny or grandma and at first I think it was her age, we were trying to bridge the gap between her and her peers. But now, after all these years and knowing there wouldn’t be a studio if we didn’t know Ronnie, we call her granny and grandma because it almost implies the love and respect we feel for the elder of our community. And at almost 77 you would think she would start to slow down, but instead she has joined a rock band, collaborated on a documentary about her life, had a exhibition here in December and January and let Carl Hammer Gallery take her new works to New York City for the Outsider Art Fair. What have the rest of us been doing? Not being an artist myself, I’ve caught myself being concerned that maybe Ronnie has had enough. But almost as if she is reading my mind, she will take her art to the next level and it appears as if she is starting all over. She gets that “I can do anything” look in her eyes and I know she’ll be making art for a long, long time. Because we wouldn’t be here without her, because she continues to amaze and inspire us and because we love her, it is our great pleasure to present Veronica with the ARTIST OF THE YEAR AWARD.