For Past Recipients, the Vision Awards Speak Volumes About the Community
By Katherine Boyce
After a four-year gap, the Vision Awards return on October 2. Five artists and community members will receive awards this year, making up for the inability to host the event during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Begun in 2015, the biennial Vision Awards aim to recognize and honor the people whose vision and action have helped make the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District the creative sector it is today. Past winners have included artists, business owners, and community members, many who worked together to formalize the neighborhood’s designation as an arts district.
Debbie Woodward, former property manager of the Northrup King Building, received the Vision Award in 2015, its inaugural year. During their ownership and management of the Northrup King Building, Woodward and her late father, Jim Stanton, and their staff gradually renovated the building from its former use as a seed company to the vital art space it is today. Over 350 artists and arts-related businesses now occupy the building.
Woodward was also a key contributor in the effort to establish the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District. “I’m not big on recognition,” Woodward said of receiving the award. Instead, she felt the significance of that moment for the community. “For me, it was seeing something accomplished. We had spent a solid ten, twelve, fifteen years to establish an arts district and create enough traction for it to be sustainable.” That first year of the Vision Awards felt, she said, like a signifier that they had collectively created something that would last.
While Woodward felt the award reflected the accomplishment of a larger group of people, she knew the part she played. “Artists are so idea oriented,” Woodward said; “I was more focused on implementation. There’s a lot of not-fun work that needed to be done.” She recalled negotiations with the city over tedious details like banners on utility poles; sometimes the ability to implement a vision is every bit as important as the vision itself. For Woodward, it was well worth it. “Our city is richer for having the arts community.”
Other past recipients of the Vision Awards have been individual artists, honored both for their art and for their contribution to the community. Jim Brenner, a sculptural artist who received the Vision Award in 2017, said the award came at the culmination of years of work he had done for the Jackson Square Park Campus and Edison High School. Brenner said the vision of that project was “a network of sculptural pieces that spoke the same visual language, to create something that’s bigger than they would be as individual pieces.” The art coincided with a multi-phase project with the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization to transform the stormwater management on the campus, with some of the sculpture integrated with water conservation and solar panel infrastructure.
Brenner felt the personal honor of the Vision Award, but like Woodward, he felt it said even more about the community. “The values of a community are reflected in what they honor. To be part of a community that respects and honors the arts is a blessing, because a lot of places take it for granted or don’t really understand its value. And here, it’s part of this space and this community’s identity.”
Artist Dougie Padilla, who received the Vision Award alongside Brenner and the late Aldo Moroni in 2017, echoed Brenner’s sentiment. “Ritual is one of the best ways a community experiences themselves.” Like Woodward, Padilla was part of many of the earliest efforts to form what has become an established and revered arts scene. “People think that there’s always been arts in Northeast and there hasn’t,” recalled Padilla. “It was very underground. The police did not want us there. They were actively shutting down art openings because they didn’t want the artists.” It took the vision and action of a whole community working together to change that.
In a career and practice that can be solitary and isolating, “we all need to be seen,” said Padilla. Moments like the Vision Awards present an opportunity for the community to “shine on your people.” And in contrast to big events like Art-A-Whirl, when artists rarely get to visit with other artists because they’re all attending to their own studios, the Vision Awards is a moment to experience it together.
This year’s winners will be revealed on October 2 at the Ritz Theater. Come celebrate the makers, creatives, activists, and visionaries who are making the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District into a community that supports the arts well into the future.