The Arts Council for Monterey County will honor Enid Baxter Blader at its annual Champions of the Arts gala on Jan. 21.

Associate professor and chair of CSU Monterey Bay’s Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department, she will be recognized in the education category. Other honorees are Beach Boys founding member Al Jardine (lifetime achievement award); Garland Thompson (luminary); Alisal Center for the Fine Arts (nonprofit); Eric and Teresa Del Piero (philanthropist); Mari Kloeppel (professional); and Sonia Chapa (volunteer).

According to the Arts Council, the event is a “tribute to the great work and inspiring spirit of our champions.

“We are proud to honor these exemplary leaders who have demonstrated such tremendous passion and commitment to the arts in Monterey County,” the council said.

Professor Blader is an accomplished artist, musician and filmmaker with a diverse arts background. Her artworks have been shown at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; Location One in New York; the Sundance Film Festival; The Arclight Theater in Los Angeles; and in Vienna, London, Glasgow and Mallorca, among other locations.

Among her recent projects is a book titled, Water, CA, which she co-edited with Nicole Antebi. The project (https://watercalifornia.org) is also a touring museum exhibition showing at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.

In 2008, she founded the Monterey Bay Film Festival, and followed that with the Monterey Bay Film Society in 2010. Also in 2010, she was awarded a federal stimulus grant to fund an ongoing community program of film workshops for at-risk, incarcerated and migrant youth.

Professor Blader earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The Cooper Union in 1996, was a fellow at Yale University, and received her Master of Fine Arts with a fellowship from Claremont Graduate University in 2000.

She is the third faculty member at CSUMB to be honored by the Arts Council, joining 2007 honoree Jennifer Colby and 2009 honoree Amalia Mesa-Bains.

To learn more about Professor Blader, visit her website.

To learn about CSUMB’s Teledramatic Arts and Technology Department, click here.