Local artist and arts activist Nancy Tankersley received an Outstanding Arts Achievement Award from the Talbot County Arts Council during the group’s annual Winners Circle Reception at the Academy Art Museum in Easton on November 20. The award recognized Tankersley’s exceptionally distinguished service to the arts as a driving force behind the initiation and continuation of the annual Plein Air–Easton! Competition & Arts Festival, which celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2014.
According to the award citation, “She envisioned the original concept for the festival and suggested many of its specific and continuing practices. As a direct result of her early guidance and intense effort, the event quickly rose to national importance and is now considered to be the largest and most prestigious juried outdoor painting competition in the United States.” The festival is held in Easton each July and has grown to involve almost 60 selected participating artists from all over the country, and now draws an audience approaching 10,000 who watch the artists paint and admire their achievements.
Plein Air–Easton! gets tremendous community support, especially from more than 200 enthusiastic volunteers. It is operated by the Avalon Foundation, whose mission is to work through the arts to improve the quality of life for citizens of Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The festival has also been assisted from the beginning by the Talbot County Arts Council, which provides grant awards to deserving arts organizations, activities, and projects.
Nancy Tankersley and her husband Carl Tankersley own a gallery in Easton which hosts the South Street Art Gallery Guild of Fine Artists. They are also active in arts education as co-founders of the Easton Studio & School.
In its 26-year history, the Arts Council has made only three previous Outstanding Arts Achievements Awards. The recipients were Ellen Vatne as executive director of the Avalon Foundation and especially its Historic Avalon Theatre, from 1994 to 2008; Christopher Brownawell as director of the Academy Art Museum from 1988 to 2010; and Donald and Meredith Buxton of Chesapeake Chamber Music (CMM)—Don as executive director of CCM since 1985, as well as founding conductor of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, and Merideth as founder and principal instructor of the First Strings Program of violin instruction in almost all elementary schools in Talbot County.
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