45th Arts Awards Reimagine Community

By Lucy GellmanJuly

Linda Mickens.

City arts director Sha McAllister.

Before her hands ever touched clay—or reimagined discarded washboards, piles of old shoes, used nails and buttons—sculptor Linda Mickens was reimagining what it meant to heal a person. As a NICU nurse, she learned that “every life has a story.” As a person existing in the world, she learned how to tell it. When she started making art, those worlds came together. 

Saturday night, Mickens was one of seven awardees at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s revived arts awards, back after an unexpected hiatus in 2025. Held at the Henry Street arts incubator NXTHVN, the event brought in over 200 attendees and raised at least $17,000 for the Arts Council by the end of the evening. 

The theme, “Reimagining,” honored artists Linda Mickens, Charlie Grady, Elm Shakespeare Company, Candyce “Marsh” John, and NXTHVN Founder Titus Kaphar. In addition, vocalist, educator and Monk Youth Jazz & STEAM Collective Founder Marcella Monk Flake received the C. Newton Schenck III Award for Lifetime Achievement in and Contribution to the Arts, and the late Emalie Mayo received the new “Legacy Award,” a posthumous honor that the Arts Council plans to continue in the coming years.  

This year’s celebration comes as arts organizations across the region reimagine their work—sometimes by choice, and often by necessity—in a landscape where both public and private funding dollars are drying up. Last year, the Arts Council operated at a deficit, forcing all full-time employees to reduce their hours and pay for nearly six months. From November of last year through March of this year, employees received partial unemployment benefits through the State of Connecticut’s Shared Work program, which is designed specifically to prevent layoffs. 

“The 45th Annual Arts Awards was the epitome of joy, community, and inspiration,” said Executive Director Hope Chávez. “So many guests commented on how these were some of the best award speeches they heard in years. The room included guests from the Whitney Center, artists and their families, students from SCSU and Yale School of Drama, legislators, neighbors, and it felt good. There were spontaneous dance breaks, lots of laughter, and a few tears of admiration and love. We could not be more honored to hold a space for celebration and realness. May it fuel the good and necessary work ahead of us.”

Throughout the night, that sense of celebration was palpable. Mickens, who was a nurse and mother before she began her second act as a professional artist, praised art as a lifesaving force, remembering how “I didn’t see discarded things, I saw possibilities.” In the years since, she has used her work as a way to speak truth to power, with sculpture that addresses social and racial justice, police and state violence, the killing of unarmed Black boys and men, and the “everyday angels” who have stayed with her, and enriched her own life. As she gave a short speech, she acknowledged how heavy some of that work is in a world upturned by war, poverty, racism and violence.    

“Perhaps the question this moment is asking us is even more important,” she said. “What could we become if we cared to reimagine together?”

Grady, an actor and former law enforcement official who founded the organization Hang Time as a way to support formerly incarcerated individuals and reduce recidivism, spoke about the personal significance of receiving recognition for the artistic work that he does in the arts—a first, despite a lifetime of acting, and plays that he has produced at the Klein Theatre in Bridgeport and Legacy Theatre in Branford. Normally, he said, people see him as only a cop, and make assumptions that put him into a political and professional box. His first film, Us Vs. Them, probes that disconnect by talking to people both in and outside law enforcement, and acknowledging the real harm and distrust that has come out of the profession.  

“Just because you have a career, that should not define who you are,” he said. “No matter what the world is going through, we have room to be creative.” 

When it was her turn to speak, Elm Shakespeare’s Rebecca Goodheart pointed to the fact that it may seem difficult to reimagine Shakespeare, a long-dead white guy from England who was writing over 400 years ago. But then, she turned to his work, which is still relevant today. Quoting Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, and Romeo & Juliet, she pointed to how the Bard’s themes are surprisingly timeless. “They speak to our shared humanity. They are truly for everyone.”

“What we do isn’t about Shakespeare,” she added, and it was easy to think of the life-saving youth programs, the still-powerful language, and the community that comes together each year for performances in Edgerton Park. “It’s about bringing people together.

“Through my art, I hope to create spaces where people feel seen,” Marsh said moments later, accepting her award, and it seemed to speak to every artist in the room. 

But the stars of the night, perhaps, were Mayo and Monk Flake, who respectively reimagined their cultural and educational corners of New Haven in expansive (and in Monk Flake’s case, still-evolving) ways. Mayo, who died unexpectedly in 2024, managed the Dwight/Edgewood Project at the David Geffen School of Drama, and was in the process of imagining “Playmaking New Haven,” a two-year program in play development for New Haven, West Haven and Hamden youth that had been funded by the Community Foundation’s REACH (Racial Equity and Creative Healing Through the Arts) grant program.  

“Emalie was a true life force in our community, and her orbit was warmed by the sun,” said Mayo’s close friend Grace O’Brien. Her cousin, Lisa Bolling, added that there’s still a gaping hole in the family. 

“She was a force to be reckoned with,” Bolling said. 

Speaking last in the evening, Monk Flake remembered waking up at four in the morning, and reflecting on Psalm 150, which compels people to make a joyful noise in the presence of the spirit. It helped her realize that “our creator is the original creative”—an idea that had in fact been within her, and driven her to serve youth through the arts, for her whole life.      

For decades, Monk has used that creativity as a force for good, both in and beyond the classroom. Saturday, she remembered how that started early, somewhere between dances around the kitchen with her older sister and listening to her cousin Thelonious Monk, the only secular musician allowed in their otherwise religious home.

She took a moment to thank her family, including her husband, Dudley, and children and grandchildren who had come out for the event. A year ago, she said, “I didn’t know if I would be here,” after a series of health complications. The award feels like a wink from the universe that she’s not done yet. 

Lucy Gellman is the editor of the Arts Paper, an editorially independent arm of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven.

The Elm Shakespeare Company crew.

Grace O’Brien and Lisa Bolling with the Arts Council’s Hope Chavez.

Candyce “Marsh” John.

Charlie Grady and Chavez.