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Kate Wallace
Telegraph-Journal

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MONCTON - For the second year in a row, the winner of the prestigious Strathbutler Award missed the party in their honour. David Umholtz, who took this year's $15,000 prize, was nowhere to be seen Thursday night at a ceremony at the Capitol Theatre in Moncton.

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Adam Huras/Telegraph-Journal

Suzanne Hill, Saint John painter and winner of the 1999 Strathbutler Award, pays tribute Thursday night to the work of printmaker David Umholtz of Deer Island, who is this year’s recipient of the Strathbutler Award.

Last year's winner, the fibre artist Anna Torma, was in Europe the night the prize was announced at The Playhouse in Fredericton.

"Just to confirm, is David in the house tonight?" asked Hal Killam, president of the board of directors of the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation, which presents the provincial arts award.

The lights went up, but Umholtz didn't appear.

"No David? OK, the party is on David," Killam said, holding the $15,000 cheque.

Saint John painter Suzanne Hill, who won the 1999 Strathbutler Award, paid tribute to Umholtz.

"I don't know a lot about who David is "¦ but I've always felt great respect for his art," she said.

Hill first saw Umholtz's work in 1988 at a solo exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton.

His huge canvases "covered with his own vocabulary of marks and signs, they were unlike anything I had ever seen, and they still resonate in my memory."

Originally from Pennsylvania, Umholtz is a printmaking pioneer in Canada, establishing the Moosehead Press in Winnipeg in 1977. He lives on Deer Island.

The influence of his Maritime home shows itself in his work. Inspired by maps, his creations are artistic, not cartographic; he stresses they are not meant for navigation. His prints are "part fact, part invention, part fancy," he writes in his artist statement.

"One of the hardest things to do is to achieve the look of spontaneity in printmaking," Hill said. "He does this well."

On behalf of the 2009 Strathbutler jury, juror Ron Shuebrook, an artist and academic who has served as the president and vice-president of the Ontario College of Art and Design, wrote of Umholtz: "His long national and international career as a printmaker, master printer, educator, cultural activist, entrepreneur and mentor has influenced generations of students and other professional practitioners across Canada and elsewhere."

Irene Klar, an art educator, painter and textile artist based in Alberta, and Hugh French, director and co-founder of the Tides Institute and Museum of Art in Eastport, Maine, joined Shuebrook on the three-person panel.

Shuebrook wrote that he and his fellow jurors were impressed with the range of disciplines and the "diversity of the aesthetic directions" of the nearly two dozen applicants for the award, as well as the high quality of the work.

"I greatly admire their brave engagements with the urgent realities of place."

Joining Umholtz on the Strathbutler short list were painters Glenn Priestley of Fredericton and Paul Mathieson, who lives in Kingston, as well as the Moncton-based sculptor and multimedia artist Luc Charette.

The prize has been awarded annually since 1991. The Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation, a private organization established by its late benefactress in 1987 to promote excellence in visual arts and fine craft in New Brunswick, presents the award.

The Nel Oudemans Award was also presented at Thursday's ceremony. Given annually to a recent graduate of the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, this year's award went to metal smith Kristyn Cooper.

The Fred Ross Scholarship, the other annual award presented by the foundation, was originally announced Tuesday at Muses Among Us, a gala tribute put on by the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Saint John in honour of Ross, the city's senior painter.

Given to a New Brunswick high school student who plans to pursue post-secondary education in the arts, this year two students shared the honour.

Jae Hyun Daniel Roh, a Grade 12 student at Rothesay Collegiate School who will attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in September, and Brandon Hunter, a budding animator at Simonds High School in Saint John who will study animation at the New Brunswick Community College in Miramichi were each awarded the $4,000 prize.