Five artists who have significantly enriched the cultural life of Contra Costa County have been selected to receive the County Arts and Culture Commission's 2007 Arts Recognition Award at a public ceremony on Sunday, October 21st at 3:30 p.m.

The awardees were selected by an independent panel of judges following a month-long nominating process. Awards were presented by The Honorable H. Abram Wilson, Mayor of San Ramon, who served as Master of Ceremonies. The Recognition Ceremony took place at the Soda Center, St. Mary's College in Moraga, and was attended by over 100 community members.

The honorees: multi-faceted artist and teacher Robert Chapla of Crockett; musician and orchestral conductor Joyce Johnson-Hamilton of Atherton; teacher and cartoonist Bill Leach of Oakley, author and Richmond Arts and Culture Commissioner Sydney Metrick, PhD, of El Sobrante, and photographer John Spence Weir of Oakland.

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Chapla has used his plein air painting to emphasize the beauty of nature and open space. Such organizations as Preserve Lamorinda Open Space, Save Mount Diablo, and the Yosemite Association have benefited from his generosity, both in terms of his time and donating a portion of the proceeds from his artwork sales. He has illustrated "Across Currents," a book of poetry on Contra Costa themes and again supported with his time and his art work projects associated with Art in the Courthouse. Chapla is active in Walnut Creek Civic Arts Education, teaching and coordinating the drawing and painting program and serving on the Arts Education Advisory Council.

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Joyce Johnson-Hamilton is distinguished both as a woman in the male-dominated world of orchestral conducting as well as a specialist in two musical instruments dating back to the Renaissance - the cornetto and the Baroque "valveless" trumpet. In addition to serving as conductor of the Diablo Symphony Orchestra for some 28 years, she is a member of the applied music faculty at Stanford University and teaches trumpet students privately. She has served as conductor and music director for several musical groups throughout California and performed with a number of period instrument ensembles.

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Visual Arts professor, musician and cartoonist Bill Leach is chair of the of Visual and Performing Arts department at Deer Valley High School in Antioch. The Oakley resident has volunteered his time to bring "live" cartoon demonstrations to school-age children and developed a public TV show, Education Alive, highlighting activities of the Antioch Unified School District. His after-school Cartoon Club opens up new avenues of creativity for students, helping to instill in them a sense of pride and accomplishment. Prior to his teaching career Leach was a touring drummer playing with a variety of musical groups. A guest spot on Creature Features led to long run as "our artist friend Mr. Bill" on KTVU's Romper Room children's show. This interaction with kids and children's enthusiastic response inspired Leach to become a teacher.

Leach has been recognized as the 2007 Teacher of the Year by the Antioch School District. Evenings find Leach teaching cartoon illustration at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg. His art and writing has been published in a variety of art magazines. And, just to add a little more zest to his life, he competes annually in the World's Fastest Drummer competition, a nation-wide contest that he also hosts annually for the students at Deer Valley High School.

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Sydney Metrick, PhD, earned her doctorate in expressive art therapy and has authored four books on art and ritual, including "Art from Ashes," documenting the response to the 1991 East Bay Hills fire. She has been a "dynamo" on the Richmond Arts and Culture Commission, according to Virginia Rigney, retired manager of the City of Richmond's Arts and Culture Commission who nominated her for the AC5 award. It was Dr. Metrick's idea to participate in Arts Millennia, a year-long festival of the arts, by creating Millennium Columns as a project for Contra Costa arts organizations. Taking the lead on this project, Metrick invited participation by arts organizations in every Contra Costa city and conducted workshops to develop the concepts for the columns to reflect each city's unique role. Nineteen columns were developed and exhibited throughout the county as well as at a performance at the Concord Pavilion (now SleepTrain Pavilion). Among Metrick's other efforts is the Hands for Peace project featuring handprints of Richmond residents and others around the world which is currently featured in the Superior Court Building in Richmond.

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John Spence Weir served for 35 years as a professor of photography at Diablo Valley College. His influence on generations of students is evidenced by many of them going into professional photography as teachers and exhibiting artists. "Weir was a pioneer by founding the photography program at DVC years before the art world acknowledged the photography as an art form," states Darwin Marable, a photo historian, who nominated Weir for the award.

Not content to rest on his laurels as a college professor, Weir maintained his own creative activities, primarily focused on his love of Mexico-its colors, forms and people. Weir's early portfolio of black and white photographs, Mexico, carries an introduction by Mexico's internationally recognized artist, Don Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Weir's photographs have been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and his photographs were included in the recent exhibitions, Advancing the Moment, Recent Work by Photographers in the Norton Simon Museum at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, and The Collectable Moment at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena. Weir's photographs are included in major museums including SF MoMA, Oakland Museum, MoMA, NY, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris among others.

"Not only are we pleased with the diversity of talent among these five people, we are especially impressed with their commitment to community, to mentoring the next generation, and to the generosity of spirit that imbues each one," said Sarah Michael, chair of the AC5 commission.