Southeastern NEWS
Southeastern Louisiana University
Office of University Relations
SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
publicinfo@selu.edu
www.selu.edu/NewsEvents
Date: 3/18/98
Contact: Christina Chapple 5
AWARDS HONORS TEN FOR ART, EDUCATION, VOLUNTEERISM
HAMMOND -- Ten people who have made significant contributions to the arts in the
Hammond area will be honored March 27 as Hammond's third annual Azalea Festival gets
underway.
The Hammond Art Awards luncheon, scheduled for noon at the Hammond Regional Arts
Center, 217 E. Thomas (the Levy Building), is the first event in the March 27-29 Azalea Festival
weekend. Festival events also include a downtown Hammond art walk, a fifties dance, a farmer's
market, a strawberry cooking contest, floral and gardening demonstrations, a pooch parade and a
home and garden tour.
Reserved tickets for the Hammond Arts Award luncheon are $15. The awards and
luncheon are a joint project of Southeastern Louisiana University's Cultural Resource
Management Program and the Hammond Regional Arts Center.
"We started the awards not just to recognize our outstanding arts leaders," said CRM
director Don Marshall, "but also as a fund-raiser for the Hammond Regional Arts Center. It's
another way of showing our support for the tremendous artistic growth in Hammond and at
Southeastern."
The awards will recognize arts impresario, voice professor and mezzo-soprano Harriet
Vogt, director of Southeastern's Fanfare arts festival, for "Lifetime Achievement" and Hammond
philanthropist, artist and pianist Marietta Schneider as "Patron of the Arts."
Effie Mazzeno, who has given her time and talents to organizations such as Hammond
Regional Arts Center, the Columbia Theatre Players and the Hammond Chamber of Commerce,
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HAMMOND ART AWARDS -- Add One
will be recognized as "Outstanding Volunteer."
Harriet Vogt is the founder and force behind Fanfare, Southeastern's acclaimed arts
festival. Her achievements in promoting the arts through Fanfare's 12 quality seasons and
educational outreach efforts earned her the university's 1996 President's Award for Excellence in
Artistic Activity. Vogt joined the Southeastern music faculty in 1973 following a long residence
in Germany and Italy. She has been an active member and officer of the National Association of
Teachers of Singing and the Louisiana Music Teachers Association and has performed
extensively in the United States and Europe. She also played a key role in successful efforts to
fund restoration of downtown Hammond's Columbia Theatre.
Along with her late husband, Hans, Marietta Schneider has been a generous supporters of
the arts in Hammond, as well as other locations, for many years. She was a charter member of the
Hammond Cultural Foundation and Hammond s little theatre group, the Town and Gown Players
and has been a long-time supporter of Fanfare and the Columbia Players. She has donated
artwork to churches in Hammond and in Dallas, Texas; helped to fund the renovation of
Hammond s First Christian Church organ; presented a harpsichord to Southeastern and endowed
chapels in Texas, and at the Boy Scouts of America s Avondale Camp. She and her husband also
endowed scholarships and professorships at Southeastern and other institutions. Her artwork has
been exhibited at the Hammond Cultural Foundation and she is an accomplished pianist.
Effie Mazzeno has been a tireless volunteer for many civic organizations, projects and
schools. She currently is volunteer chairman for the Hammond Regional Arts Center and during
last year s Azalea Festival she helped with the visit of the Art Train exhibit. She gave more than
500 hours of service to Loranger Elementary School and helped lead the quest to have
Hammond s old Methodist Church restored as a town meeting hall. During the 1980s she was an
enthusiastic -- and enthusiastically received -- member of the casts of Columbia Theatre
musicals. As a Hammond Chamber of Commerce employee, her volunteer efforts helped stage
major events such as the Balloon Festival, Hammond Heritage Day and Caroling in Cate Square.
She also served as secretary for Crimestoppers and the Adams Lillie Association.
Awards will also go to
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Dance: Southeastern assistant professor Martie Fellom, founder of the university's
danceworks resident dance company. A Southeastern graduate, Fellom received a doctorate in
performance studies from New York University in 1985, joining Southeastern's faculty the same
year. Southeastern honored her with its prestigious President's Award for Excellence in Artistic
Activity in 1995 and the Louisiana Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and
Dance named her Louisiana Dance Educator of the Year for 1993-94. Her choreography has been
selected for the gala concert of the American College Dance Festival South Central Region and
won the New Orleans Big Easy Entertainment Award for Best Modern Dance Production in
1994.
Design: floral designer and Southeastern horticulture instructor Linda Ryan. Ryan is a
certified master floral designer and has demonstrated her talents to garden clubs throughout
southeast Louisiana. She has been a member of the Hammond Garden Club for almost 20 years
and served as the club's president. She also is a nationally accredited flower show judge and has
been an active member of the State and National Garden Clubs.
Literature: Southeastern's award-winning literary journal, Louisiana Literature,
edited since 1992 by English professor David Hanson. Founded in 1984 to chronicle and discuss
writing by and about Louisiana writers, the journal has achieved a national reputation for quality.
Recently, it was ranked among the top four finalists for "Best Design" in the 1997 Council for
Editors of Learned Journals awards. It also has earned honorable mention for editorial content in
the 1992 American Literary Magazine Awards and yearly is nominated for "Poetry Fifty" and
"Fiction Fifty" by Writer's Digest. The journal's latest venture is the Louisiana Literature Press,
which will issue a series of poetry chapbooks.
Music: Southeastern music professor and opera-music theatre program director
Scharmal Schrock. Schrock, who joined the Southeastern music faculty in 1981, has staged
approximately 50 musicals and operas, including dozens of shows for young audiences, at
Southeastern and for the Columbia Players. A graduate of the Cincinnati College-Conservatory
of Music and Indiana University who also studied as a Fulbright Scholar in Germany and
Austria, Schrock has appeared as a recitalist and soloist throughout the United States and Europe,
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including the Atlanta, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, and
Shreveport Symphonies.
Theatre: playwright, and artist-in-residence Larry Gray, Southeastern Professor
Emeritus of English. The founding editor of Louisiana Literature, Gray also helped create the
Hammond Cultural Foundation and the Columbia Players. He has written seven plays, including
the Louisiana Trilogy, which was produced by the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, N.Y., and
Scrapbooks, which won the Mid-South Playwrighting Competition. His works have been
produced by the Columbia Players and in Memphis, New York City, London, Chicago, and
Bogalusa.
Visual Arts: nature photographer Julia Sims. Julia Sims' photographs of the Manchac
Swamp reveal the unique beauty of the area's landscape and wildlife. Collected in Manchac
Swamp: Louisiana's Undiscovered Wilderness, the photographs also have been published in
magazines such as Audubon, Ducks Unlimited, National Geographic and Reader's Digest. Sims'
work has been displayed in solo exhibitions and juried exhibits as well as on posters, calendars,
billboards and textbook covers. She received the Northshore Performing Arts Association's
"Artist of the Year" award and the National Conservation Medal from the Daughters of the
American Revolution.
Arts in Education: Ponchatoula High School art teacher Kim Howes Zabbia. Zabbia
is an artist, author and teacher. Her three vocations come together in her advocacy for victims of
Alzheimer's Diseases. In a series of 20 paintings, published in Painted Diaries: A Mother and
Daughter's Experience through Alzheimer's and exhibited in eight solo exhibitions, Zabbia
explored her mother's struggle with the disease. She continues to teach art full time and
frequently speaks to Alzheimer seminars and conventions. She is a member of the Louisiana
Governor's Task Force on Alzheimer's and Southeastern's Children's Art Council.
Tickets for the Hammond Art Awards are available at the Hammond Regional Arts
Center, 542-7113. Reservations are required.
-SLU-
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