Two new Bainbridge art world icons, Lynn Brunelle and Steve Stolee, have been inducted into the storied ranks of Island Treasure Award recipients.
Award officials confirmed the duo’s nomination earlier this month, capping a secretive selection process which mandates anonymity on the part of nominators and approval by a final five-juror panel, its members drawn from island-based cultural organizations and individuals long associated with local arts and humanities entities: schools, theaters, libraries, etc.
Conceived in 1999, the Island Treasure Award honors excellence in the arts and/or humanities and is presented annually to two individuals who have made outstanding contributions in those areas and the community at large. Candidates for the awards must have lived on Bainbridge Island for at least three years and have displayed “an ongoing commitment to their chosen field.” Past winners have included such Bainbridge luminaries as Bob McAllister, Frank Kitamoto, Gayle Bard, David Guterson, Kristin Tollefson, Kathleen Thorne, Sally Robison, Johnpaul Jones, Janie Ekberg, John Willson, Diane Bonciolini and Gregg Mesmer, and Cameron Snow, among others.
Formerly officiated by Arts & Humanities Bainbridge (formerly the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council), the Island Treasure Award is now an independent organization, its committee chaired by Cynthia Sears.
Brunelle and Stolee will officially be presented their awards, and a cash prize of $5,000, at the annual ceremony, this year to be held at 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 16 at IslandWood (4450 Blakely Ave. NE).
Tickets ($50 to $125 each) and further information is available at www.brownpapertickets.com (Event #4052195).
Lynn Brunelle: The science of success
Geek chic is rarely so perfectly personified as it is in Lynn Brunelle, a former classroom teacher turned award-magnet author, editor and illustrator, whose work has long proved education can also be first-class entertainment.
She won four Emmy Awards as a writer for “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” five Telly (excellence in video and television) and two CINE (Council on International Nontheatrical Events) Awards, has created numerous projects for National Geographic, Scholastic, Random House, Penguin, A&E, Discovery, Disney, ABC, NBC, NPR and PBS, among others, and is the editor, illustrator and/or author of more than 45 books, including her latest: “Mama Gone Geek,” a memoir for which she was awarded an Independent Publishing Award Gold Medal.
Brunelle is also a glass artist, with work on display at several local shows and galleries, and appeared, along with her son, in a recent Olympic Performance Group production of “The Nutcracker.”
As one nominator wrote, “Not only is she tremendously accomplished in her field, she is also the definition of the criteria for the Island Treasure Awards — commitment, unique vision, and inspiration.”
Regardless of her resume, Brunelle said she was gobsmacked to learn of her selection.
“There are so many cool people on this island, I still keep saying, ‘Why me?’” she laughed. “I was blown away, seriously blown away.”
She came West from New York to work on “Bill Nye,” (she got the gig based on a random cold call and several stellar spec scripts) after a stint in the publishing world where she worked primarily on science and nonfiction books for kids.
But even before that, Brunelle said, though the means and medium may have changed since, her first job was ultimately her calling.
“I went to college and then I went to England to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, because I fell in love with Shakespeare, and then I came back and got a teaching job,” she said. “This was back in the day when they would take the kids who were the ‘behavior problem’ kids and pull them out of classrooms and put them all in one classroom, that was my first teaching job. I had like 28 behavior problem kids, grades four through eight, in one room.”
It actually wasn’t the nightmare you’d expect, surprisingly.
“A couple of them were really scary,” Brunelle said, “but most of them were brilliant kids [who] just thought really differently.”
Lesson learned: Thinking differently has been the hallmark of her own work since.
“Bill Nye the Science Guy” — “‘Saturday Night Live’ meets ‘Mr. Wizard’ [is] what we were going for,” she said.
“Pop Bottle Science” — a book inside a miniature bottle-shaped science lab.
“Turn This Book Into a Beehive!” — which, delivering on the title promise, can be morphed into an actual living home for backyard bees.
The list goes on.
“I’ve certainly had fun,” Brunelle said, recalling her career thus far. “I just feel like as long as it made a difference to someone who said, ‘That’s so interesting! Maybe I’ll do that?’ or ‘I never thought about that before!’ That, to me, is the best. And I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘Oh my God, I became a bio major because I read this or saw this.’”
Steve Stolee: Life through a lens
The DIY ethic has long been a guiding command for Steve Stolee, on stage and behind the camera, and today’s readily available technology and a culture of obsessive documentarians looking to share stories has finally caught up his abiding initiative.
Coming to Bainbridge from North Dakota, via Alaska, the canny independence that marks much of his work is a holdover, Stolee said, from his time spent in America’s last frontier.
He’s a producer/director of many films, including “One Man’s Treasure,” about the annual Bainbridge Island Rotary Auction & Rummage Sale, “Old Goats” (2010), “Out of Gas” (2007), “Listen, Draw and Tell,” for which he partnered with Island Treasure George Shannon to lead kids in an interactive storytelling project, and also “Portrait of Louise” (2009), about longtime Bainbridge Performing Arts costume designer Louise Mills, among others.
Ironically, Stolee has documented the lives of some of Bainbridge’s greatest art world figures, including many past Island Treasure Award winners, the resulting short films, screened at the annual award banquet, being an acknowledged highlight of the event.
This year, when he was first contacted by the award committee, Stolee said he thought it was business as usual — and was then told he’d be pointing the camera at himself.
“Being the focus of it is very weird,” Stolee said. “It’s not true that it didn’t occur to me; I bet anybody here who’s paid any attention at all to this [has thought], ‘Gosh, I wonder if I will ever get one of those?’ And I always thought, ‘Forget about that. That’s a stupid dream and certainly not an appropriate expectation.’”
Stolee is something of a local art world fixture, having been involved, directly or jointly, in many of the most prominent creative undertakings of recent decades. He knows everyone, it seems, and everyone knows him.
In the words of one nominator: “To many in our community he is already considered a treasure and I hope we can fully recognize his many contributions by officially naming him an Island Treasure.”
In addition to his many movie credits, Stolee has been a regular BPA stage presence, and was a founding member of Island Theatre in 1994. He has served as stage manager, director, performer and marketing specialist, and was likewise instrumental in founding the group’s incredibly popular annual Ten-Minute Play Festival. His photography has been shown in several galleries, and he was the designated photographer of a 1990 international children’s theater production which established the connections that made possibly the subsequent founding of the famed Camp Siberia project by Island Treasure Awardee Janie Ekberg. In 2002 his nonprofit The Picture Project photographed an exhibition of children’s artwork and, so moved as Stolee by their enthusiasm, he then worked with Hansville artist Fred Nicholson to create a three-film series about the participating young creatives and their work.
Throughout, Stolee said he has sought above all to keep engaged.
“I’m constantly curious, that’s what led me to photography and filmmaking,” he said. “I like to talk to people. I like to know what they’re doing. I like to hear how they did what they did, that’s just fascinating to me.
“This is a vibrant community full of people who are doing awesome stuff.”
Though receiving the award has put him in a retrospective state of mind, Stolee said he doesn’t dedicate much time to the idea of a personal legacy. He’s not too worried about the future either. He’s got work to do.
“I don’t need to know what’s going to happen,” Stolee said. “I don’t have a goal about how it gets done or where it goes or who it affects exactly — I want to be engaged. Everything I do is a decision about how I can be engaged better.”
