TBBCA 2019 IMPACT Awards recognized Honorees for their extraordinarycontributions to and in support of arts education, culture and the arts.

For information on Tampa Bay BCA pARTnerships, and events throughout the year, and Sponsorships for 2020 IMPACT Awards, contact TBBCA Executive Director at susanaweymouth@tbbca.org or (813) 221-2787.

Lifetime Achievement: Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly is the bestselling author of thirty-two novels and one work of non-fiction. With over 70 million copies of his books sold worldwide and translated into forty foreign languages, he is one of the most successful writers working today. A distinguished graduate (1980) of University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, Connelly got a job as a crime beat writer, first at the Daytona Beach News Journal, followed by the Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel. One of the stories he worked on earned Connelly a place as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The honor also brought Connelly a job as a crime reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He moved to California in 1987 with his wife, St. Petersburg-born Linda McCaleb, whom he met while in college and married in May 1984. In 2001, Connelly left California for Tampa Bay, Florida, together with his wife and daughter, so that they could be closer to their families. His novels still took place in Los Angeles.Shortly after the move to Los Angeles, Connelly began writing his first published novel. The Black Echo (1993). The book is partly based on a true crime and is the first one featuring Connelly’s primary recurring character, Los Angeles Police Department Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, whom Connelly named after the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, known for his paintings full of sin and redemption. The Black Echo, won the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. Since then, Connelly has won nearly every major award given to mystery writers, including the Anthony Award, Macavity Award, Los Angeles Times Best Mystery/Thriller Award, Shamus Award, Dilys Award, Nero Award, Barry Award, Audie Award, Ridley Award, Maltese Falcon Award (Japan), .38 Caliber Award (France), the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière(France), Premio Bancarella Award (Italy), and others.Michael Connelly’s most recent #1 New York Times bestsellers include Two Kinds of Truth, The Late Show, The Wrong Side of Goodbye, The Crossing, The Burning Room, The Gods of Guilt, and The Black Box. In 2012, The Black Box won the world’s most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA Prize for Crime Writing. In 2018 at a ceremony in London the Crime Writers’ Association awarded Connelly with the CWA Diamond Dagger, the highest honor in British crime writing.In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly’s 1998 novel, Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of his #1 bestselling novel, The Lincoln Lawyer, hit theaters worldwide starring Matthew McConaughey as Mickey Haller. Connelly is the Executive Producer of Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story, a documentary about the late jazz saxophone player, Frank Morgan. He is currently producing a TV series for Amazon Studios called Bosch, based on his novels. It began streaming on Amazon Prime in early 2015, and its 6th season is currently in production.The NYT #1 best-selling novelist’s newest thriller is Night Fire (October 2019).-           “Dark Sacred Night is one of the best and most affecting Bosch novels since Mr. Connelly began the saga in 1992, underscoring the growing and unsettling ambiguity surrounding its central character.”—Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal–          “Spectacular…Dark Sacred Night is ingenious, frantically suspenseful, and very, very, bleak.”—Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post–          “Michael Connelly is superhuman…His hallmark has been his precise, faultless plotting…Connelly has always been especially good when it comes to truly creepy killers-he was once a crime reporter-and his denouement here is thrilling.”—Charles Finch, USA Today

Patron of the Arts: Lorna Taylor

Lorna Taylor is the President and CEO of Premier Eye Care, a leading expert in national managed eye care that provides services and administration of everything from routine vision exams to complex ocular surgical procedures. Taylor is an accomplished leader, both in directing Florida-based Premier and in making an impact in the community. Premier, ranked as one of “Florida’s Best Companies to Work For” for seven consecutive years — #1 in mid-sized companies in 2019 — has also been ranked as one of the state’s fastest-growing companies by the Florida Business Journals. Premier manages full-risk medical and routine ophthalmic care for over 4 million people and is recognized for industry-leading technology-based solutions and a successful corporate culture. Taylor promotes associate engagement through an organizational model that encourages innovation and self-direction to team members, half of whom are millennials.Taylor and her leadership team embrace a culture where the triple bottom line, “people, planet, profit,” is part of the corporate DNA.  Her team is purposeful in hiring and promoting practices.  Premier believes that the more diverse the team at all levels of the organization – from entry to senior leadership – the stronger the team.  Premier also practices pay equity across the company, including gender, age and ethnicity.  This requires an intentional focus with continual review and adjustments.  Reflecting the success of this approach, Premier has high associate loyalty and engagement with only a 2% turnover rate, significantly lower than the 22% industry average, and has been ranked nationally as one of the 75 Best Places to Work for Millennials by the Center for Generational Kinetics.Taylor received Angie’s Award for exemplifying a commitment to community service, as well as was awarded the Health & Wellness category of the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s Business Woman of the Year awards.  Among her other awards: Supporter of the Year, Faces of Philanthropy by the Florida Museum of Photographic Art; Woman of Distinction by the Girl Scouts of West Central Florida; the Light of Sight Award from the Lion’s Eye Institute Foundation, and the Sustainability Leadership Award from the Sustainable Business Coalition of Tampa Bay. Also, she was named as an entrepreneur of the year by the Business Observer and received the Tampa Bay Ethics Award from the University of Tampa’s Center for Ethics; the International Women’s Day Leadership Award from Working Women of Tampa Bay; and, the Mildred M. Baynard Founder’s Award presented by Preserve Vision Florida.Personally, Taylor is involved in a wide variety of community and nonprofit causes. She has board positions with The Dalí Museum, Preserve Vision Florida, Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence Foundation, The Athena Society, University of Tampa Board of Trustees, Arts Conservatory for Teens, and Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture and the Arts. Reflecting her approach to work and community, Florida Trend named her as one of St. Petersburg’s movers and shakers, and she was named by Tampa Bay Times columnist Ernest Hooper as one of the 10 most intriguing people of Tampa Bay.She has also been involved at the board level in the International Green Belt Movement for many years. Led by founder and Noble Laureate, Dr. Wangari Maathai, the group built a coalition of women in Kenya, paying for every tree seedling they planted. From this initiative, the women started businesses and improved conditions in their communities. Since 1977, the movement has planted over 50 million trees, and the effort has had a profound impact on making steps toward environmental sustainability, eradicating poverty and empowering women.For nearly two decades, Taylor has been one of the strongest supporters of Tampa Bay BCA. As Past President, and current Director on the Board, her loyal and committed ongoing service and extremely generous support have helped realize and carry forward the Tampa Bay BCA’s mission, and the legacy of the TBBCA Art Stars Scholarships program founded in 2008 by her dear friend, the late Charlie Hounchell.She is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary with a master’s degree in divinity, concentrating in social ethics.

Innovation in the Arts: Kalup Linzy

Kalup Linzy is an internationally recognized multi-faceted performance artist who works across various mediums and disciplines that include video, performance, photography, collage, fashion, television, music, and film.  Linzy’s work is in the public collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Studio Museum in Harlem – all in New York City, and the Birmingham Museum of Art (Alabama), and The Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania).  His work has been included in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Prospect.1 New Orleans, 30 Americans, Rubell Family Collection, MoMA PS1 Greater New York, At Home/Not At Home: Works from the Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College.  In addition, he has been featured in exhibitions at the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Berkeley Art Museum, The Hammer Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, amongst others.  He has exhibited extensively internationally, including in Argentina, Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Russia, Scotland, South Africa, and Spain.Linzy’s bold and pioneering work, quite unlike any other artist, courageously mines challenging childhood experiences and situations of hardship, class, gender, and race. His gritty, hyperbolic, often theatrical video and performance works and satirical narratives employ a variety of pop cultural forms such as soap operas to thematically explore gender fluidity and boundaries, and cultural identities, with plots calling on socialization and community. With the intention to create videos and performances that are at once comic and poignant, fusing dramatic intensity with melodramatic irony, Linzy serves as writer, director, cinematographer, editor and in a distinctive strategy, voice and overdub the dialogue of multiple characters. He creates characters with extensively mapped backgrounds, layered and linked together with others to form his invented ‘family tree’. He also performs live and creates collages, paintings and photography as these charactersKalup Linzy has been honored with numerous prestigious awards, fellowships and grants, including The Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; The Jerome Foundation grant; The Harpo Foundation grant; The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant; The Creative Capital Foundation grant; The Art Matters grant; The Headlands Alumni Award residency; Tulsa Artist Fellowship; Art Omi; Fountainhead Residency, Miami; MacDowell Colony Residency; Camargo Foundation Summer Institute, Cassis, France, and others.Linzy has served as professor/visiting artist/visiting lecturer/studio critic at Harvard, Yale, Rutgers, Columbia University, Parsons, School of Visual Arts in New York, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia, Phillips Collection and George Washington University, New York University, University of Illinois-Chicago,  The New School-NY,  Chicago Institute, Glassell School of Art-Houston, MICA-Baltimore, University of California-Davis, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Cranbrook, Bloomfield Hills, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Ox-Bow School of Art and Art Residency, and University of South Florida.Linzy is a graduate of University of South Florida Bachelor of Fine Arts (2000) and Master of Fine Arts, Studio Art (2003), and USF Study Abroad Program in Paris, France. He also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2002) in Maine.For over a dozen years Linzy’s primary studio was in Brooklyn, New York. Currently he has a studio as a Tulsa Artist Fellow (Oklahoma).  Throughout the years Linzy has maintained strong Tampa Bay ties. He recently curated an exhibition of 15 prominent artists at Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, where he also serves on the board. In 2015, he was one of the artists featured in A Family Affair – the USF Contemporary Art Museum exhibition that highlighted artistic explorations of personal identity and family relationships, as well as broader frameworks of race, class and gender. Linzy was commissioned by USFCAM to create 83 hand-painted photographic collages detailing a fictional family tree, rooted in Stuckey, the historically black community in Central Florida where he grew up. Linzy was also invited by USF Graphicstudio for a collaborative project, working across the artistic platforms of USF’s Institute for Research in Art, and resulting in an archival pigment print edition of himself appearing as one of his more recent performance characters.Linzy has also collaborated with many well-known artists, celebrities, and fashion designers, including James Franco, Jillionaire of Major Lazer, Chloe Sevigny, Natasha Lyonne, Liya Kebede, Leo Fitzpatrick, James Ransone, Dan Colen, Nate Lowman, Diane von Furstenberg, Proenza Schouler, Michael Stipe, Tunde Adebimpe and the band TV on the Radio. In 2010, he was invited by and featured on General Hospital alongside James Franco playing Kalup Ishmael. Linzy has been featured at Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, and Outfest.  Kalup Linzy is represented by David Castillo in Miami Beach and The Breeder Gallery in Athens.

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