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For immediate release:

Winner Announced

Canadian Sculptor and Performance Artist Nobuo Kubota
wins the design competition for the new Globe and Mail Business for the Arts Awards

July 21, 2006

In April of this year, as part of their new partnership, The Globe and Mail and The Council for Business and the Arts (CBAC) announced a national competition for a new award art piece. More than fifty Canadian artists responded to the call with a wide variety of design concepts. The jury was made up of three artists and two representatives of The Globe and Mail and included: internationally renowned Canadian architect Bruce Kuwabara, Sara Diamond (President of the Ontario College of Art and Design), Richard Sewell (artist and founder of The Open Studio), John Stackhouse (Editor, Report on Business, Globe and Mail) and Cathrin Bradbury (Managing Editor of Features, Globe and Mail).

The jury considered the qualifying submissions without knowledge of the artist’s name or career details. The design alone was the deciding factor and only once the winner had been selected was their name disclosed to the jury.

Born in British Columbia in 1932, Mr. Kubota is a well known creator, exhibitor and performer in Toronto and across Canada. His visual art works and sound poetry performances have been featured at galleries and performance spaces across the country. Mr. Kubota has been a faculty member at OCAD and, with Michael Snow, is one of the founding members of the CCMC – the Canadian Creative Music Collective. As part of his submission, Mr. Kubota provided an explanation of his design which is made up of a polished stainless steel undulating wave form passing through a brushed aluminum circle. The Circle embodies multiple layers of symbolism – power, energy, completion returning to the source, continuous movement and progression through time. A Wave is a disturbance that propagates through space, transferring energy from one point to another. Mr. Kubota added: “I would like to think that the recipient of the award has created energy toward the integration of the business and art communities. Since this is an arts related award, the proposal intends the form to be a miniature sculpture.”

The winning design will be unveiled at the first Globe and Mail Business for the Arts Awards gala on October 16th at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

The CBAC is a national business-based organization whose mandate is to encourage partnerships between the corporate sector and the Canadian cultural community. Since 1978, CBAC has presented more than 170 Business and the Arts Awards to companies which have demonstrated outstanding commitment to Canadian cultural organizations. www.businessforarts.org

The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, is a division of Bell Globemedia, a dynamic multi-media company, which also owns CTV Inc., Canada's number-one private broadcaster.

For more information please contact:
Charmian Love
416 869 3016 x222
charmian@businessforarts.org