Filmmaker Craven wins this year’s Herb Lockwood Prize in the Arts

Vermont film director and impresario Jay Craven from Barnet received the 10th annual Herb Lockwood Prize in the Arts on Oct. 21 at Burlington City Arts Center.

Craven received a $10,000 cash award.

The prize recognizes artists who produce significant work in the areas of visual arts, music, writing, drama, dance, film and fine woodworking, while also having a beneficent influence on the Vermont community.

Craven created Catamount Arts in 1975. It was an unusual acorn to plant, and in stony soil. At that time, performing arts were not prized in rural areas for their ability to build and foster community, nor for their capacity to strengthen a local economy.

Craven was literally ahead of his time. What began as a staging and production idea has become a vast enterprise with the central venue of the Community Arts Center in St. Johnsbury, and with connections to more than 40 other arts organizations around the region.

A partial list includes the Tap into Film 48-hour Student Film Slam, the Levitt AMP Music Series, First Night North, plus arts education programs at every school in the region, from open mic events for teens to violin intensives designed to lift children out of poverty.

Add the countless arts interns from Vermont State University campuses in Johnson and Lyndon, and elsewhere, and Catamount Arts engages with thousands of students every year.

The acorn has become an oak.

But Craven didn’t stop there. He formed Kingdom County Productions in 1991 and has made 10 dramatic films.

The titles are as familiar as the names of some Vermont towns: “Where the Rivers Flow North,” “A Stranger in the Kingdom,” “Northern Borders” and many more. While cinema is one of the most expensive forms of art, Craven managed to work with tight budgets and generally local funding, squeezing six cents out of every nickel.

The resulting films all shared one important element, as a direct result of all the collaboration and inclusion, a form of cinematic gold the major studios can only dream of: authenticity.

There were stars, many in fact: Kris Kristofferson, Genevieve Bujold, Rip Torn, Jacqueline Bisset, Martin Sheen and Tantoo Cardinal. Yet the aesthetic core was to celebrate Vermont, and to mine its artistic riches.

“Cultivating this sort of village of talent is central to who Herb Lockwood was,” according to a press release announcing the prize. “He was a person who gathered artists of every stripe and kind, connected them, inspired them, and watched how they lifted one another’s work.”

Herb Lockwood Prize

The Herb Lockwood Prize was founded by his brother, Todd R. Lockwood, and some like-minded friends from the Vermont arts community. The prize has no application process, and artists do not know they are being considered for it.

Nominations are provided by an anonymous network of arts advisors in Vermont. Its purpose is fourfold: to validate the work of the recipient, to energize that artist’s future, to encourage other artists to work ambitiously, and to honor Herb Lockwood’s memory by continuing his inspirational influence.

Prior recipients include fine artist and typographer Claire Van Vliet, filmmaker Nora Jacobson, author Howard Frank Mosher, puppeteer and artist Peter Schumann, musician and public radio host Robert Resnik, dancer and choreographer Hannah Dennison, Latin Jazz musician and teacher Ray Vega, and poet McCadden.

According to prize officials, Herb Lockwood, who died in a Burlington workplace accident in 1987 at age 27, made an enduring impact on the region’s arts and artists, gaining recognition in a variety of art forms: cartooning, painting, writing, woodworking, sculpture, storytelling and tai chi.

Mostly, though, Lockwood was a musician. Formally trained on classical guitar, his musical inclinations knew no bounds, whether adapting ancient Irish jigs to a baritone bouzouki, creating a new vocal twist on an old standard, or ripping out riffs on a jazz guitar.