2011 Creativity & Arts Award Winners Announced

ATLANTA (September 1, 2011)—Emory College Center for Creativity & Arts announces the recipients of the 2011 Creativity & Arts Awards, recognizing Atlanta and Emory community members who have made significant artistic and administrative contributions to the arts. Among the winners are Chris Appleton, co-founder and executive director of WonderRoot; James W. Flannery, director of the W.B. Yeats Foundation; Malina Rodriguez, artistic director and co-founder of Dance Truck; and D. Patton White, artistic director of Beacon Dance. 

Awards will be presented at the Creativity & Arts Soiree, September 9, from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. in Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. The soiree celebrates the opening Arts at Emory season with performances and arts activities; it is free and open to the Atlanta community. For details, visit arts.emory.edu.

Read more about this year’s award winners: 

Community Arts Administrator: Chris Appleton 
Chris Appleton is co-founder and executive director of WonderRoot, a nonprofit organization dedicated to arts advocacy and fostering social change through art. The organization serves a multigenerational, multiracial audience through adults art education, youth arts-enrichment and collaborative public arts initiatives. WonderRoot believes that "artists have the potential to change the world." Visit the WonderRoot website.

Community Artist: Malina Rodriguez 
Artistic director and co-founder Malina Rodriguez "brings dance to the people" via her mobile dance center, Dance Truck. With a truck, dancers, lighting and sound, Rodriguez and her company perform all over Atlanta. Dance Truck has partnered with Le Flash Festival, Decatur Arts Festival, Eyedrum, Garden*Hood, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, MondoHomo, Museum of Design Atlanta, Good Food truck, and the MINT gallery.  She recently co-produced "PLOT," created by Emory alum Blake Beckham. Rodriguez also works in the theatre community as a set builder, rigger and lighting technician; and is a lighting designer and technical director for dance and performance artists. Visit the Dance Truck website.

Faculty: James W. Flannery 
James W. Flannery, the Director of the W. B. Yeats Foundation and the Winship Professor of Arts and Humanities at Emory University, came to Emory in 1982 to found the university’s theater program. The Yeats Foundation presents a wide range of lectures, concerts, poetry readings, exhibitions and major international symposiums. From 1989 – 1993, the Yeats Foundation sponsored, with the help of the Coca-Cola Company, the Yeats International Theatre Festival at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Under the direction of Flannery, the Festival featured productions of the poet’s one act plays. Flannery also directed and produced the Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert, an Atlanta and Emory tradition for eighteen years. The concert celebrated in music, dance, poetry, song and story the spirit of the Celtic and Appalachian Christmas traditions; in 2010 it was filmed by PBS and will be broadcast to a national audience later this year. Visit the W. B. Yeats Foundation website.

Alumni: D. Patton White 
A 1983 Emory graduate, D. Patton White has been working as a performing artist and choreographer for over twenty-five years.  Since 1990, he has held the position of artistic director of Beacon Dance. Under his tenure, Beacon Dance evolved into a professional, multi-faceted dance organization presenting a variety of programs to the community. He and the company have had numerous commissions from many of the leading arts organizations in the Atlanta metro area. In addition, he conducts workshops around the country and recently served as an artist in residence at the University of Nevada. Visit the Beacon Dance website.

Staff: Mary Catherine Johnson 
Mary Catherine Johnson, Assistant Director of Emory’s Visual Arts Department and Gallery, works closely with Emory students and faculty, as well as with artists, scholars, donors, and a curatorial committee toward the planning and implementation of exhibitions and events that engage significant issues through contemporary visual art. One of the highlights of her work at Emory was the coordination of a major public art commission with renowned photographer Dawoud Bey that communicated Emory's diversity through portraits of staff, faculty, and students. Visit the Visual Arts Department website.

Graduate Student: Joey Orr
Joey Orr was instrumental in founding The Visual Scholarship Initiative (VSI), a student-run organization committed to visual and multi-media practices in contemporary interdisciplinary scholarship. The VSI provides opportunities for Emory University students, faculty, and staff to meet and discuss visual scholarship issues and topics and their relation to issues of both theory and production. The organization seeks to create an intellectual and, at times, physical space for support, reflection, and critique. Visit the Visual Scholarship Initiative website.

Undergraduate Student: Charlotte Watts 
Charlie Watts founded the Emory Arts Club and now serves as president for the STIPE Society of Creative Scholars, which fosters creative scholarship and arts awareness at Emory College. She is invigorating the visual arts culture on campus among students through club meetings and her own art projects. With a grant from the Center for Creativity & Arts, she recently completed a series of paintings on the art of hooking up, to be presented in an interactive exhibition this October.

Volunteer: Jennie Saliers
Jennie Saliers serves on the board of directors for Emory's Friends of Music. She has spearheaded membership recruitment and marketing for Friends of Music and supports Emory through her attendance at concerts, financial support, and her active board leadership. 

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Emory College Center for Creativity & Arts:
The Center for Creativity & Arts enriches the lives and intellectual work of students, faculty, staff, and the larger Atlanta community; working to shape a creative campus that ignites the imaginative spark within us all.