Award Category: Applied Art and Design Award

Brad Turner creates sculptural and functional glass objects with a strong focus on conceptual originality, superb craftsmanship, and cohesive intent. He maintains a diverse practice that weaves in-and-out of craft, art and design. While his work displays the care and technical expertise expected of top artisans, it is imbued with a unique design sense. As an object maker, Brad strives to create well-made, thoughtful objects that add relevant content to creative culture. He has steadily garnered recognition for his work, receiving 24 industry awards over the years, and readily pursues artistic development over stability. Brad has quickly become a positive influence within the Vancouver glass scene and is considered a talented and committed artist, designer and craftsperson who contributes his wealth of knowledge to the community.

To pursue a career anchored in creativity and design, Steven Pollock dropped his briefcase 15 years ago and picked up an unconventional material: concrete. Using self-taught techniques, Steven finishes the cast concrete and incorporates other materials to create minimalist pieces, which leave very little room for forgiveness; each piece must be perfect and no detail goes unnoticed. Mirroring the environment around him and drawing on the relationship between humanity and its interaction with nature, Steven’s work utilizes BC’s homegrown materials and is often inspired by local architecture. In his own words, “Working with concrete is a commitment. It’s a material that retains the ugly and the beautiful.” Steven’s award-winning bold and distinctive designs are easily recognizable and make a unique contribution to BC’s cultural and creative economy.

Mel Munsen is a master of fused glass, a technique demanding artistic sensitivity, painstaking work and a thorough understanding of his chosen material. Over the past 20 years, Munsen’s exceptional art glass has been shown in Victoria galleries. He also has an international profile abroad where he has exhibited and sold work in museums and galleries in Canada, the United States, Italy, Japan and Korea.

Form3’s goal is to create products of substance that are more desirable, useful, and sustainable. Since 1997, this Vancouver based company’s teamwork and attention to detail have contributed to getting products successfully into production and reaching the marketplace. Several high technology companies and adventure sports manufacturers that Form3 has worked with have evolved into market leaders with strong, internationally recognized, visual brands.

Since 2009, Peet has been practicing his craft with an aesthetic maturity and fluidity that has commanded attention. As owner of Lukas Peet design studio and co-founder of ANDlight, a Vancouver-based decorative lighting company, his work has been recognized with a number of awards. Peet brings a vast curiosity about objects, processes, materials and production techniques to his work while supporting his desire to challenge the familiar and the normative, and everything in between.

Established in 1967, Mustang Survival has been designing and manufacturing lifesaving solutions for close to 50 years in Burnaby, BC. Through constant innovation and inspired technical solutions, Mustang Survival is the leading supplier of quality flotation and personal protective equipment to the most demanding maritime and aviation customers.

Alastair Heseltine was born in England where he researched and trained in traditional basketmaking using willow. During the 1990s, Alastair planted willows on Hornby Island, establishing himself in Canada as a producer of articles for home and garden. Through adapting traditional patterns he gradually developed a practice of experimental weaving incorporating other materials into what has become a varied repertoire of woven work, not only the utilitarian, but also the ornamental, sculpture, installations, and community projects.

Kelly Austin is an emerging ceramic artist from Vancouver, BC who has had an active creative practice since 2007. A graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2011, Kelly is currently working on her Masters of Philosophy in Ceramics at the Australia National University in Canberra. Kelly’s work ranges from the directly functional object – used in restaurants, cafés and the home – to engagement with conceptual ideas of relationships between objects, still life and architecture.