What an amazing event this year’s Steveston Grand Prix of art was! I think it was the smoothest it’s ever run, and very well attended: We sold out registration over a week in advance with over 100 artists painting, had over 60 volunteers to make everything run so smoothly, and over 1300 visitors to see the exhibition at the Seine Net Loft on Saturday and Sunday. And boy did our artists get lucky with the weather for the Grand Prix, considering the downpour on Sunday!
Thanks to the generous contributions of our Partners, we were able to make this year’s Steveston Grand Prix of Art one of the most successful yet. As always, thanks to the City of Richmond and all the staff at Britannia Heritage shipyards, who were supportive and welcoming hosts. As our Host Partner, providing an amazing home base for the Grand Prix as well as many painting locations, the event would not be possible without this partnership with Britannia Heritage Shipyards and the cooperation and coordination of Lucy Higgs-Lockie. Our other Location Partners along with the Steveston Harbour Authority provided the artists with the rest of the places to paint.
Special thank you to our Community Partners: including Mary Ann Burrows who sponsored the top Masters Prize, Wendy Chen of Awen Gallery sponsoring the Open category. Richmond Artists Guild co-sponsor of the Youth awards and Penta Building Group, whose generous sponsorship allowed us to hire our wonderful musical guests: The Ear Buds, Route 9, and Crabtree. We had awards, raffle prizes, and artist “goody bags” provided by Alvin, Pebeo, and Golden/Tenline Sales, some of our supportive art supply wholesalers including Cup Easels who provided the prize for our People’s Choice award. The artists and volunteer lunch was sponsored and prepared by the Steveston Seafood House which was a huge hit once again. Davood’s Bistro kicked things off in the morning with coffee, scones and muffins for artists and Damien Belgium Waffles finished off a beautiful lunch providing a sweat treat. Thank you as well to our business partners like Remax, Vancouver Whale Watch, Tourism Richmond, Teldon, Steveston Harbour Authority, and our media partners Steveston Insider and Richmond Sentinel. The staff at Phoenix Art Workshop, as always, have been amazing, not only doing their usual work at the store but also helping behind the scenes to put everything together.
There were two fantastic volunteers photographers, Mark English and Fabian Dominguez, we’d like to thank, who had a lot of ground to cover to get pictures of the artists at work at 35 different locations from London Farm to the Gulf of Georgia Cannery. You can see some of their pictures of the Grand Prix on our blog page. Another place to see some of the images captured during the Grand Prix is on our Grand Prix of Art Instagram page, and also by searching the #GPOA2019 hashtag on Instagram. You can see the posts of our “Instagram-to-Win” contest winners here, who won Pebeo prize bags for their pics! Make sure to follow our Grand Prix Instagram page so you can see all about the lead-up to next year’s event, which will be our 10th Steveston Grand Prix of Art… we have some special plans for next year’s Grand Prix as the event will be part of the first International Plein Air Symposium here in Richmond.
Youth Awards
Richmond Artist Guild and Phoenix Art Workshop
1st Place: Twiggy Chen: “Imperial Landing” ($150 Phoenix Art Workshop Gift Certificate)
2nd Place: Alison Koo: “Big Blue” ($100 Phoenix Art Workshop Gift Certificate)
3rd Place: Amy Geng: “Saturday” ($50 Phoenix Art Workshop Gift Certificate)
Honourable Mention: Riley Bouchey: ($25 Phoenix Art Workshop Gift Certificate)
Adult Open Category Awards
presented by Awen Gallery’s Wendy Chen
1st Place: Barb Jost – “Day at Steveston” ($500 Cash Award)
2nd Place: Lucy Collins – “Street Crossing” ($250 Cash Award)
3rd Place: Gina Rubin – “London Wharf” ($150 Cash Award)
Honourable Mention: Alana Hansen – “Heart of Steveston” (Pebeo prize-bag and $50 Phoenix Art
Workshop Gift Certificate from Awen Gallery)
Honourable Mention: Christine Stusek – “And Then They Opened The Umbrellas” (Pebeo prize-bag
and $50 Phoenix Art Workshop Gift Certificate from Awen Gallery)
Masters Category Awards
1st Place: Dan Gray – “Steveston View” ($1000 Cash Award from MaryAnn Burrows)
2nd Place: Will Yang – “Moody Day” ($400 Cash Award from Phoenix Art Workshop)
3rd Place: Mo Khaleel – “The Master Boat” ($200 Cash from Award Phoenix Art Workshop)
Honourable Mention: Chris Block – “Prickly Pear” (Pebeo prize-bag and $50 Phoenix Art Workshop
Gift Certificate from Vancouver Whale Watch)
People’s Choice Award
Presented by Cup Easel and Travelling Brush
Will Yang – “Moody Day” $250.00 Gift Certificate to Phoenix Art Workshop and 8cup easel presented by Cup Easels
