And the winner of the Bernie Legge Cultural Award is... Katherine Freund-Hainsworth.
But Freund-Haisnworth didn't hear them announce her name Thursday night, at the second annual Platinum Awards organized by the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce.
"The people around me had to say, 'They just called your name.' I've won a couple of awards for different things, but not in a setting like that. ... It was really fun," Freund-Hainsworth told The Record.
The glamour of the awards, from the announcing of the nominees to the Oscar-style reveal of the winner, must have distracted the long-time New Westminster artist, she recalled.
Co-author of A New Westminster Album: Glimpses of the City as it Was, Freund-Hainsworth blends her passion for writing, fine arts and history in much of the work she produces.
For many years she has been an important facet of New Westminster’s Heritage Week. During the annual event, Freund-Hainsworth’s work can be found on display at the library on Sixth Street. Last year she created a line drawing for students participating in the Heritage Week colouring and poster/photography contest.
Freund-Hainsworth also sits on the New Westminster Arts Council and has helped develop LitFest New West, the annual celebration of literature and local writers. Much of this work and her own art goes relatively unrecognized, which makes sense seeing as Freund-Hainsworth doesn’t do it for the glory, she said.
But that doesn’t mean she is pleased that the community that inspires her has recognized her work.
“You don’t get that recognition all the time like that, so it was a really, really neat experience,” she said. “When something like this happens, it just feels really big.”
Freund-Hainsworth does all her work from her home in New Westminster’s west end. It can be a very solitary endeavor and even when she’s completed something, her face and name are not front and centre, she said.
“It’s a great honour because a lot of artists don’t get recognized for things,” she said.
Freund-Hainsworth was also nominated last year but lost to Angie Au Hemphill. She figured that was the end of it and never expected to be nominated again, let alone win the award.
“And then I got a call … saying that I was nominated again this year and I thought, ‘What are you talking about?’” she said.
Despite her own doubts, she was awarded the Bernie Legge Cultural Award.
“It makes me look at things differently in that it’s not just me working at home,” she said. “It kind of brings forward more of an incentive to work on more of the visual historian side of the research that I do, and it makes you realize that people actually out there notice that you are doing stuff on New West.”
