The city of Sedona recognized four key contributors to the Sedona arts scene with the seventh Mayor’s Art Awards, last presented in 2017, at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 2, during an awards ceremony that emphasized the relationships between the arts and the learning process.

The awards were presented by Mayor Scott Jablow. Winnie Muench of Sedona Ballet,received the individual award, while Mike Upp accepted the organization award on behalf of the Sedona Visual Artists Coalition. Chamber Music Sedona’s Sedona Community Youth Orchestra program received the education award, accepted by cofounders Kristina Beachell and Courtney Yeates, and Susan Kliewer was honored with the lifetime achievement award.

“Art makes up the soul of a community. Art is healing. Art slows us down. It causes us to reflect. Art brings us together,” city Arts and Culture Specialist Nancy Lattanzi said. “For decades Sedona has been a defining art town … it’s one of the reasons I moved here. I got the little book on the hundred best art towns in the country and that’s how I found Sedona.”

Lattanzi also paid tribute to arts and culture work group member and Sedona Arts Center ceramics department head Dennis Ott, who died three weeks before the ceremony.

“He was positive, joyful, just so much fun to be around, and the best bear hugs ever,” Lattanzi said. “In his last email to me … I asked him if he was coming, to make sure, since I wanted to get the count, and his response was, ‘I wouldn’t miss it; count me in.’ I would like to dedicate tonight’s ceremony to Dennis.”

Winnie Muench

“I think our children need to see the art of the possible, and the only way our children can do that is to see the very best,” Muench said. “So I made it my mission to bring the very best of dance and music and whatever else I get involved in to Sedona for our children … Our first foray into that was working the Phoenix Ballet, which was a pre-professional company, which allowed 30 to 50 of our children every year to participate in a professional production of ‘The Nutcracker.’ Many, many children get their start in the arts by attending a concert. It can be dance or music, or it can be going to a museum and seeing a painting, but it starts as a youth, and if it’s great, they’ll sit in the audience and say, ‘I can do that.’ ‘I want to do that.’ That really was my motivating force.”

“Children that participate in the arts have a higher success rate later in life,” Muench continued. “They have a lower dropout rate. Their grades are significantly better … having grown up in the arts, we come into our adulthood with discipline. We understand the importance of work, because that work leads to achievement.”

“The recognition really belongs to everyone who’s contributed to creating a vibrant arts community in Sedona,” Muench said. “The arts are more than an aesthetic experience. They are the heartbeat of this city, a powerful force that fuels our creativity, builds our community spirit and connects us to our shared humanity. When a community supports the arts, it strengthens its very foundation, filling it with resilience and beauty and innovation. Art provides a space where people of all ages can connect over shared stories, perspectives and dreams, and Sedona Ballet is really proud to be a part of this. For our young people, the arts are transformative. They give our youth a place to explore and express, to grow their confidence and discover their voices … showing them the beauty of collaboration and self-expression … Art challenges us to think differently, to embrace empathy.”

Sedona Visual Artists Coalition

“You need to understand where your visitors are coming from,” Upp said of SVAC’s Open Studios Tour. “What kind of experience are you looking for when you go on vacation somewhere related to the arts? The answer that has come back over the years is they want an immersive experience. They don’t want to just go look at art at a gallery or festival, they want to go and get immersed, and Open Studios is the perfect thing to do that, because not only is it a way to look at beautiful art … it also allows them to see work in progress, it allows them to talk to the artists directly, see where they work. It’s a hugely different experience than any other way to see art, and I think that is the number one reason people put it on their calendars.”

Upp also mentioned that working in the arts had been an educational experience for him personally.

“Running the Tempe Arts Festival taught me about marketing,” Upp said. “I was able to transfer that to high-tech, and then I was able to transfer that experience back to the arts.”

Sedona Community Youth Orchestra

“We bring world-class musicians to Sedona, but we also feel that part of our mission statement is education, teaching the young people about music,” CMS Board Secretary Richard Witlin said. “Music stimulates all different parts of your brain. Teaching students, bringing music to them, getting them involved, is part of the complete learning experience.”

“Once the [COVID-19] pandemic was over, we really needed to rebuild the strings programs in Sedona,” Beachell said.

“A year and a half ago, we got it together … we thought it was just going to be cathartic, get the band back together, play a concert, and it was,” Yeates said. “It’s kept going from then on. It’s now an intergenerational program … I have an 8-year-old and a 72-year-old who are stand partners. It goes also to what art does in the community, that social cohesion. It warms my heart to see that happening. That tight-knit fabric that we are in Sedona, that that weave is even tighter through music. All walks of life getting together.”

“Kristina and I have high demands for what we expect of the music, but we also know that these are people that are learning music,” Yeates said. “It’s all about heart at the end of the day.”

“We have kids from all over the Verde Valley,” Beachell said. “It would be amazing if we could actually have a symphonic orchestra someday here in Sedona for the kids and for the rest of the community. That would be the ultimate goal.”

“If you want to join them and learn an instrument, you know how to hunt us down,” Yeates said. “You’re never too old to learn.”

“As music educators we’re constantly validating music,” Beachell said. “Music [is] very important just for the sake of music because it contributes to the wellness of individuals and the community.”

“It’s like that old Bette Miller song, The Wind Beneath My Wings,” Yeates said. “That’s what Chamber Music Sedona has been to us as music educators, so it’s really nice to see them be recognized for all the help that they’ve been behind the scenes.”

The youth orchestra will be working with the Sedona Dance Academy to provide live music at their Dec. 14 production of “The Nutcracker.”

Susan Kliewer

Kliewer, best known for her sculpture of Sedona Schnebly outside the Sedona Public Library, learned her art on the job working at a Sedona foundry.

“A lot of the guys that worked there were all sculpture students at [Northern Arizona University], and they encouraged me to start making something,” Kliewer said. “They encouraged me to take a class at NAU, which I did two days a week, and it was Anatomy for Sculptors, and that was a big help. The man that owned the foundry was really nice about letting us use the foundry for our own pieces and cast our own bronzes. We just had to pay for the material. And that was a great start, because artists have a hard time coming up with the money for casting.”

“That’s where I got my sculpture education,” Kliewer reminisced. “It was a whole new world. It was smoky and dark and hot and dirty. I loved it and I still love it.”

It also gave her a chance to learn from members of the Cowboy Artists of America. “I got to work on all these great artists’ work,” Kliewer said. “They’d come into the wax room where I worked and tell me little tricks of the trade. It was a great education and I didn’t even know it.”

“Being an Indian trader at Marble Canyon, that came into play, too, when I started sculpting. I knew so many Navajo friends,” Kliewer recalled. “A lot of the Navajo people were hesitant to model for me. In the long winters up there, it was quiet. But after a while they kind of liked it. I did pastel portraits back then. They didn’t want any of their friends to see them modeling. They thought it was kind of embarrassing.”

“I always wanted to be an artist, and my dream has come true,” Kliewer said. “It’s so nice to have everybody here to celebrate with me.”