XL Arts

Arts Hall of Fame honors Austin's creative geniuses who created a scene

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, June 01, 2006

From stages to rehearsal, galleries to dance studios, drawing boards to board rooms, this year's inductees to the Austin Arts Hall of Fame have left their mark on the city's creative profile.

Chosen by the reviewers known collectively as the Austin Critics' Table, these luminaries include a civil rights champion, an opera innovator, a nurturing museum leader, a man synonymous with community dance, an expansive architect, a passionate theater teacher and one of independent theater's most valuable players.

They will be honored Monday at the Critics' Table annual awards.

David Nancarrow / Lighting designer, professor

Austin audiences get only a glimpse of lighting designer David Nancarrow when he takes the stage at the end of an Austin Lyric Opera. Nancarrow is the white-haired gentleman in a kilt, his sartorial tribute to his English heritage.

Yes, as ALO resident lighting designer, the now-retired longtime University of Texas professor only takes a few moments in the spotlight. But there wouldn't be a spotlight without him.

Since 1963, Nancarrow has taught the fine art of what he calls "shining light on people," helping guide several generations of youngsters into the theater profession.

"His creativity and insight brings out the best in students," says award-winning theater designer Michael Raiford, who names Nancarrow as one of the greatest influences of his creative life. "When I attended UT, his was the voice that I heard the clearest and related to the most. His clear eye truly helps students see as they have never seen before."

For Nancarrow's part, while the collaborative process of theater production has proved enormously rewarding over the years — especially playing such a fundamental part in the development of Austin's first opera company — it's his role as a teacher and mentor that makes him beam.

"I think the students — all of them — are my proudest accomplishment."

Ken Webster / Director, producer, actor, playwright, artistic director of Hyde Park Theatre

As a director, his cohorts say, Ken Webster is "an actor's director." As a performer, "a director's dream."

Then there are his achievements as a forward-thinking producer of new plays, a playwright of smart and funny scripts and a capable arts administrator behind one of Austin's most regarded independent theater venues and companies. Numerous descriptors emerge when his colleagues talk about the multitalented native Texan with the smooth baritone voice.

Ron Berry, artistic director of Refraction Arts and the Blue Theater, says that onstage and off, Webster "can play so many different types. He's funny, he's sad, he's mean, he's mysterious."

A driving force in Austin's theater community for 27 years (he was among the first in town to pay actors, setting up his first payroll in 1981), Webster has mined the talents of often overlooked American and Canadian playwrights to find intelligent, quirky, language-driven dark contemporary comedies. Then, he hones the scripts into tight, beguiling productions, crafting smart performances from a range of actors and garnering numerous awards along the way.

"Ken's plucked that string perfectly — that perfect tension between something so funny and so horribly tragic," says Berry.

"I just try not to get my crazy fingerprints all over a good script," says Webster.

Luckily for Austin's theater community, though, Webster has put his fingerprints on so many things.

Charles Moore / Architect, professor, theorist

Perhaps more than anything, Charles Moore instilled joy in architecture. Moore, who died in 1993, spent his life thinking about and making places of great joy — places that had resonance, meaning and democracy.

Moore, who was born in Michigan in 1925, came of age architecturally when it wasn't fashionable for architects to reveal their inspirations or to demonstrate their passion for a particular locale or culture.

But Moore was expansive, humane and curious and couldn't contain his love for discovering and understanding the importance of individual places. Moore loved things that spoke of a particular place, whether it was Navajo blankets, Mexican folk art, antique metal toys or any number of other objects he loved to collect.

But his most lasting collection is the trove of ideas and writings that influenced generations of architects. Moore is one of a handful of modern architects whose writing was as important as the buildings he built.

When Moore, a dedicated teacher, landed in Austin in 1984 to teach at UT, he quickly absorbed the spirit of Austin, fashioning himself an idiosyncratic home and studio in West Austin that is now a national landmark and community resource for architecture and design, the Charles Moore Center for the Study of Place.

A lover of cocktails, breakfast at Las Manitas Avenue Cafe and road trips to Mexico, Moore eagerly partook of Austin's specialness and left us a memorable landmark of his own making.

Rodolfo Mendez / Choreographer, founder and artistic director of Ballet East Dance Theatre

Every once and awhile, Rodolfo Mendez entertains the thought of stepping aside. Since founding the community-based Ballet East Dance Theatre almost three decades ago, he's seen his days and nights filled with bringing dance classes to historically underserved Austin communities while also mentoring young dancers and choreographers, giving them a stage on which to test their talents.

But then, another young eager face turns up and, Mendez says, "I think, where are these kids going to go? If I don't do this, who will?"

Growing up in Austin, Mendez felt lucky to get some exposure to dance thanks to early ballet lessons and the South Texas folkloric and flamenco troupes that landed in town for temporary teaching stints. Though dancing in New York after high school broadened his professional horizons, it was a three-year stint in the Peace Corps that would profoundly shape his path. In Costa Rica he developed dance and theater programs for primary and secondary grade levels, components of which are still being used today.

Back in Austin, Mendez used the same curriculum to develop community programs. In addition to teaching in schools throughout Austin, Mendez's company has given budding dancers and choreographers the chance to hone their skills. Ballet East alumni have gone on to professional careers as dancers and choreographers, presenting their work at Lincoln Center, among other famed venues.

"My focus has always been to provide a platform for kids to have exposure and opportunity in the arts," say Mendez.

"He's humorous, passionate, driven and utterly committed to dance," says choreographer and UT dance instructor Andrea Beckham. "His is a dance company for our community and for our future."

Jessie Otto Hite / Director, Blanton Museum of Art

Unflappable. Wisehearted. Steadfast.

When others might have folded, Jessie Otto Hite stayed in the game.

Indeed, her peers say it was her resolute leadership of the Blanton Museum of Art through some very tumultuous times that made the new $83.5 million University of Texas institution a reality.

"Jessie never lost sight of the goal," says artist and longtime UT art professor Ken Hale.

Giving birth to the largest university art museum in the nation isn't exactly what Hite had in mind when she joined the museum's staff in 1979 as a part-time curatorial assistant. For the Houston native fresh out of art history graduate school, a museum gig seemed like a good steppingstone for whatever she might do next.

But instead of moving on, Hite, herself an avid gardener, put down roots and started the long process of cultivating a new museum. Her dedication paid off. After becoming steward of the largest fine arts fundraising effort in UT history and weathering a very public debacle over the building design, Hite was the first to welcome the public to the sparkling new museum in April, happily passing out admission stickers to the first who lined up to see UT's treasure trove.

"Generations of students, artists, scholars and visitors to the museum will benefit from Jessie's extraordinary energy, vision and tenacity," says Hale. "UT, Austin and Texas owe her a great debt."

Robert DeSimone / Director, Butler Opera Center, University of Texas

"It's only the beginning," says Robert DeSimone. "We're just starting."

True — DeSimone has big plans for the newly established Butler Opera Center, UT's burgeoning opera program. But for the past two decades, the proud son of Italian immigrants ("Opera was part of our daily life," he says. "I thought everyone listened to opera.") has steadily built a professional opera training program that now counts Metropolitan Opera soloists Mary Dunleavy and Lucy Shaufer among its many famed alumni, not to mention the numerous students and alumni who regularly perform with Austin Lyric Opera.

When DeSimone arrived in Austin in the mid-1980s, the only live opera in the live music capital of the world could be seen on campus. When Austin Lyric Opera came on the scene a few years later, DeSimone smartly shifted UT's focus. Yes, the classical repertoire was still a part of the training for up-and-coming divas and divos. But DeSimone went in search of new music, mining the talents of living composers whose experimentations are often overlooked by established opera companies. Of the 144 productions he has directed at UT, 12 have been world premieres, seven U.S. premieres including "The Old Majestic" by San Antonio native Robert Xavier Rodríguez and "La Tentación de San Antonio" by Luis Jaime Cortez, the first opera in Spanish ever presented in Austin.

DeSimone's track record as an innovator and astute trainer of young talent is a large part of the reason noted Austin philanthropists Sarah and Ernest Butler donated $2 million to UT's opera program, among the largest gifts a university opera program has ever received.

"We have followed the program for 20 years," says Ernest Butler. "He is very sincerely dedicated to help each perform to their very best potential."

Ada Anderson

Perhaps no one in Austin has been more of an advocate for change and diversity than Ada Anderson.

The third-generation Central Texan has for more than 50 years been a leader in the political, economic, social and artistic life of the capital city.

Known for her soft-spoken but forceful style, Anderson organized against segregation in the early 1960s, established with her husband what was one of the city's only real estate firms to serve African American customers and worked the political campaigns of some the state's most notable Democrats, such as John Connally and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

But as she was influencing enormous social and political change, Anderson also trained her energies on diversifying access to the arts, opening doors and offering opportunities where previously there had been none.

In 1989, she founded the Leadership Enrichment Arts Program, or LEAP, as a way to expand the audience for Austin Lyric Opera — of which she is a founding board member — to include minority youths.

But in her inimitable style, Anderson, who has also been a board member of Austin Museum of Art and currently sits on the board of the Long Center for the Performing Arts, expanded LEAP to include not just the opera, but also ballet, symphony and art museums. Each year, at-risk children from across Austin are immersed in arts education programs before heading to performances and exhibits.

"Ada is truly a cherished gift for all us in Austin," says Cliff Redd, executive director of the Long Center. "She leads from her heart and acts from her head with a vision and clarity few humans ever achieve."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699