English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Arts & Humanities Bainbridge (AHB) is committed to nurturing our local cultural community through recognition and grants to individual artists.
Individual Artist Grants
The Individual Artist Grant supports artists who live or practice on Bainbridge Island and enables them to pursue a practice that contributes to the cultural life of the community.
Amy Award for Emerging Artists
The Amy Award is presented to a young adult under the age of 35, who is or has been an island resident, has compiled a body of work in the visual or performing arts, and whose work demonstrates a sense of quality, creativity, exploration and dedication.
2023 Individual Artist Grant Recipients
Molly Brahmer is passionate about creating visually captivating murals that evoke positive emotions and uplift the spirits of viewers. With a keen eye for color combinations and a talent for transforming blank walls into vibrant instagram-worthy wonders, she is on a mission to sprinkle joy and color across her hometown of Bainbridge Island. She strives to spread happiness and leave a lasting impact through her art.
Isobel is a teaching artist living on Bainbridge Island, originally from the UK. In her work she uses rolled out clay as a canvas, painting layers of colored glaze within which she draws whimsical illustrations and patterns using an Italian decorative technique called Sgraffito, in which marks are made by scratching through the surface of painted glaze to reveal a lower layer of contrasting color. She has held exhibitions at the Blackbird bakery and Grace church. She has held workshops and artists residences at Island wood, Bainbridge Island Museum of art, The Nordic heritage museum, and The Hands on Children’s museum in Olympia. She is the art teacher at Montessori country school. She is passionate about teaching art and bringing people into community craft events to teach hands-on projects. Community ceramics inspires her own creativity and inspires creativity in others in ways that they might never have previously imagined.
Donna Lee Dowdney creates fabric and mixed media art. She captures the moment with bold, saturated colors. Her artistic projects use multiple fabrics, yarns, cords, free-motion stitching, embroidery, thread painting, appliqué, beading, collage, dyeing, painting, needle felting, stamping, and other surface design techniques.
Before creating her current artistic projects, she owned and operated a professional writing business in Palo Alto, California. She taught writing and technical communications throughout Silicon Valley and chaired the Technical Communications Department at De Anza College.
When she retired and moved to Washington, she pursued her interest in art and enrolled in the Gail Harker Center for Creative Arts, now located in La Conner, Washington. For ten years, she was a student, and her experience primed her for her art career. She began displaying her fabric and mixed media art in civic centers, hospitals, clinics, museums, galleries, businesses, festivals, markets, the Seattle Convention Center, Latimer Quilt and Textile Center in Tillamook, Oregon, and the Pacific International Quilt Festival in the Santa Clara Convention Center.
Donna’s motto is “It’s never too late to explore and begin new adventures of the imagination.
David Repyak, founder of SHINE Art Academy, is a Montessori Credentialed, K-8 Certified WA State Educator. SHINE Art Academy is an Arts Education school whose purpose is to awaken a child’s full potential through a fully integrated curriculum. We embrace CREATIVITY, CONFIDENCE, and COMMUNITY through freedom of choice to support a child’s growing independence. We offer: summer art programs, plein air painting, tutoring, adult art therapy, after school enrichment, and home school support.
Peter C. Sprung is an emerging artist who creates sculptures and paintings, and the founder of “Artists Foment,” a pilot project to inspire social change and heighten public awareness through artistic collaborations and socially-engaged artistic practices. Mr. Sprung, a first generation American and the offspring of victims of Nazi persecution, began making art in Washington, D.C. while working as a white collar corruption prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department. Laboring in the tumult of the first Trump Administration, he produced paintings that embodied archetypes of aggressor and victim, evil and innocence, ugliness and beauty, and chaos and control.
Since moving to Bainbridge Island in 2022, he has created a series of abstract sculptures assembled from wood, metal, stones, and shells that evoke the island’s unique natural beauty, history and culture. He is now working on a new series focusing on the harmful environmental impacts of the island’s creosote and microplastics problems. He hopes that these works will help to raise public awareness and propel change.
The Artists Foment project is designed to promote robust socially-engaged artistic practices, platforming alternative artistic voices, and encouraging the use of contemporary techniques across disciplines. The project involves incubating regular presentations, salon-style meetings, dialogue, shows, studio visits, critiques, and podcasts among area artists. Since June of this year, he has hosted a series of Artists Foment events involving free, public artist talks and discussions of his project at BARN and pop-up shows of the artists’ work at his nearby artist studio. More events are planned in the coming months. He is gathering a group of artists and arts professionals to participate in the project, including not just visual artists but also performance artists, dancers, and poets.
Kaya Yamazaki is a Nihon Buyo (Classical Japanese Dance) artist, performer, choreographer, and anthropologist. Originally from Tokyo, Japan, Kaya began her Nihon Buyo training at age four and has been dancing ever since. Kaya teaches Classical Japanese Dance at Bainbridge Dance Center.
Purpose
The Individual Artist Grant is intended to support the creation of new work by eligible artistic professionals.
Arts & Humanities Bainbridge is continuing its historical Individual Artist Grant program. In years past, AHB (then known as the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council) supported local artistic professionals through the award of small grants. The Individual Artist Grant likewise supports artists who live or practice on Bainbridge Island and enables them to pursue a practice that contributes to the cultural life of the community.
“The Amy Award is a wonderful and giving way to bring awareness to the importance of support to the arts. I hope, as Bainbridge Island grows and grows, we will all continue to remember that we can all make a difference. I cannot thank the Anderson family, Arts & Humanities Bainbridge, Bainbridge Arts & Crafts and the Bainbridge Island community enough for their support!”
– 2012 Amy Award winner Jherek Bischoff
Amy Award
for Emerging Artists
The Amy Award is presented to a young adult under the age of 35, who is or has been an island resident, has compiled a body of work in the visual or performing arts, and whose work demonstrates a sense of quality, creativity, exploration and dedication. The Amy Award has been presented since 2001 to talented young artists who have continued to work in their chosen field including theater, dance, film, music, printmaking, jewelry making, mosaics, sculpture and photography.
The Amy Award is funded by an endowment established by David and Caren Anderson in memory of their daughter Amy. Amy Anderson was involved in the visual and performing arts and is remembered by many people today as a gifted young woman of great promise. The Amy Award is presented in her honor to provide encouragement and support to other young artists in our community.
2022 Winner:
Brendan Bennett
Bainbridge Arts & Crafts and Arts & Humanities Bainbridge are delighted to announce the winner of the 2022 Amy Award for Emerging Artists; film producer, editor, and writer Brendan Bennet.
Brendan's Background
Brendan and his family arrived on Bainbridge Island when he was just three years old. After graduating from Bainbridge High School in 2016, he headed to Los Angeles to attended USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in their Film and Television Production Program, graduating in 2020. “I am very grateful to grow up in a place like BI and cherish every opportunity I get to come home,” he said.
His exposure to the theater and storytelling began at an early age. His mother, a theater producer, frequently took Brendan and his brother to shows, either because she was working the production, or because she felt it was something they should see. It was during those early years that he became enamored with the performing arts and began taking acting classes and working backstage. When he finally got his hands on a video camera, he started making home movies. As a high schooler, he worked at Bainbridge Performing Arts in the box office, as well as assisting to run the front of the house for Shakespeare at Bloedel Reserve. In addition, he was an assistant teacher for summer theater school classes.
Brendan’s work has screened at prestigious festivals throughout the United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, France, Denmark, and Greece, by more than 11 million people online. For more information, visit his website: bennettbrendan.com.
Previous Amy Award Recipients
The Amy Award has been given annually since 2001 to an emerging artist from Bainbridge Island, under the age of 35, whose work demonstrates “a sense of quality, creativity, exploration, and dedication.” Managed by the Arts & Humanities Bainbridge, the award is funded by an endowment established by David and Caren Anderson in memory of their late daughter, Amy, who was deeply involved in the visual and performing arts. Bainbridge Arts & Crafts and Bainbridge Performing Arts select recipients in alternating years.