Cultural Council announces 2023 honorees
The Cultural Council of Birmingham Bloomfield has announced the honorees for its 2023 Birmingham Bloomfield Cultural Arts Awards, which will be presented at an awards ceremony on Friday, October 13, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Birmingham Bloomfield Arts Center.
This is the 28th year the cultural arts awards have been presented. The honorees are selected based on their impact on the cultural life of the community and/or beyond by a diverse jury of arts enthusiasts in the community.
The 2023 Cultural Arts Award will be presented to Stephanie Pizzo, who is a dancer, collaborator and educator. Pizzo has been with Eisenhower Dance Detroit since its founding in 1991, as dancer, associate artistic director, resident choreographer and finally as artistic director of the company for the last six years. The company, now in its 33rd year, is one of the premier contemporary repertory dance companies in the country, performing not only locally and nationally, but also internationally.
Under Pizzo’s leadership, education plays a major role in the company. A new state of the art dance complex, funded by the Strum Allesse Foundation, opened this past January, bringing world-class dance and fitness opportunities to the community, and her educational collaborations with schools as diverse as the Detroit Public School Community District to Detroit Country Day have expanded the company’s educational reach to impact children across all socio-economic borders.
The 2023 Special Lifetime Achievement Award, given in recognition of Artistic Expression of Humanity, is being given to Kegham Tazian. Tazian's award honors the ‘artistic expression of humanity’ seen in his tremendous body of work, and his impact on thousands of aspiring art students who, one of his nominators stated, “either sought to understand visual art more deeply, or pursued his guidance to bring their own potential for artistic expression to life” during his 40-year tenure at Oakland Community College.
The “Best in Show” prize at OCC’s annual student art show is otherwise known as the Kegham Tazian Art Prize and is funded by the Tazian Art Foundation.
Tazian’s works are renowned, and his public commissions can be found worldwide. The city of Birmingham, where Tazian resides, is fortunate to have been gifted one of his sculptures, Pyramid Earth, which is installed in Linden Park as part of the city’s Art in Public Spaces program.
The 2023 Partners with the Arts Award is being presented to The Community House In recognition of their centennial year and their longstanding role supporting the arts in the Birmingham Bloomfield community.
