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Ben Logan traveled as a merchant seaman, and worked many years as a novelist, producer and writer of films and television, and lecturer, while living forty miles north of New York City. Yet his roots remained in the southwestern area of Wisconsin. He returned to his childhood farm "Seldom Seen" in the mid-1980s, and has lived there ever since. From 1960-1985, Ben was senior producer for United Methodist Communications in New York state. He won an Emmy award for best-written documentary film, "Taking Children Seriously", which aired on NBC-TV in 1986. His book The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People was published in 1975 and has never been out of print since. It retells the story of Logan’s boyhood and his home around Richland Center in a way which captures the essence of the Robert Gard Foundation ideals.
Bukoski teaches English and creative writing at University of Wisconsin – Superior. His stories, focusing upon his ethnic roots within the Polish east end of Superior, celebrate the Gard Foundation’s ideal: there is a universe to be discovered in everyone’s backyard. His stories have been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in many literary venues in the U.S. He won the Oskar Halecki Prize, the Creative Arts Award from the Polish American Historical Association and the first ever fiction prize from the Polish Institute of Houston. His books have received Outstanding Achievement Awards from the Wisconsin Library Association and twice received the Anne Powers Book-length Fiction award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. In 1997 he was featured in the PBS video A Sense Of Place: Three Midwestern Writers. He was recipient of a 2002 fellowship in fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. Time Between Trains was selected as a “Booklist Editor’s Choice“, one of the best adult fiction titles for public libraries in 2003.
McKenna made sustained, outstanding and significant programmatic, administrative, or support contributions to arts education at the local, state and national levels. Retired Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communication (1989 to 2005), McKenna is the founder of the arts management degree at University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, the only BA degree in arts management in the UW System. He managed ArtsWorld, an interdisciplinary summer program for high school arts students at UWSP. As chairperson of the Stevens Point Arts Council, McKenna assisted the community in building the Riverfront Arts Center. In addition, he served as chairperson of Region Four of the National Association of Schools of Music; president of the Wisconsin Music Educators Association, board member of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans; and vice president for the Arts, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. In 1992 he was awarded the Wisconsin Music Educators Association’s Distinguished Service Award.
Spring Green has an historic partnership with Robert Gard in the 1960s and with the Uplands Arts Council. This unique relationship created a catalyst for the arts in the Wisconsin River Valley.
As a community arts volunteer, Peg Stiles is a model of extraordinary achievements. In 1974 she started a massive campaign to save a vacant church in Monroe, Wisconsin to become what is now the Monroe Arts Center. She is spearheading a campaign for an endowment for the Center. The Center embodies Robert Gard's vision of a place where the community gathers to celebrate its creativeity. She has been recognized in her community and with a Wisconsin Governor's Award for the Arts for her work.
Stower has provided strong supportive leadership for the development of arts at the local level, championing local artists throughout Wisconsin. He is a United Methodist minister and Mayor of Amery, Wisconsin. For eight years he represented Polk, Burnett and portions of Saint Croix counties in the Wisconsin State Assembly. In 1995 he received the Community Arts Development Award from the Wisconsin Assembly for Local Arts.
Thompson began his career 30 years ago as a specialist in statewide theatre programming through the University of Wisconsin. His early faculty supervisor and mentor was Robert Gard. Over the years, Thompson has chaired various art departments at the University and is retired as the chair of the Dept. of Liberal Studies and the Arts. Among his achievements, he founded the Wisconsin Theatre Association, is co-producer of the Wisconsin High School Theatre Festival, director fo the School of the Arts at Rhinelander founded by Robert Gard, producer of the annual Theatre Auditions in Wisconsin and was director of the National Conference for Community Theater Directors.
Amhaus, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Arts Board from 1991 to 1996, former President of Forward Wisconsin, the state's business attraction organization and currently President of Spirit of Milwaukee.. He was the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Commission, the chief executive officer responsible for the two-year planning of programs and activities related to a yearlong 1998 statewide celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Wisconsin's Statehood.
Auerbach is professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to teaching and lecturing to community organizations, she also co-produces “University of the Air,” broadcast weekly on public radio, and continues to develop the award-winning “Courage to Write” series of documentary programs on women writers. She currently is working on a book “Searching for Jane Austen.”
The visual art of Hunt-Wulcowicz, created in her Janesville studio, interprets the rural countryside through linework drawing, etching, lithography, printing and watercoloring. Her work was selected for the Andrew Balkin Editions, a portfolio organized for the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial. She was represented in the Elvejhem Museum’s “150 Years of Wisconsin Printmaking” in 1998. She has exhibited and demonstrated printmaking techniques in Japan.
Jerry Apps writes about rural America, authoring more than 25 books and articles on adult education and learning, plus the history and lore of Wisconsin and the Midwest. As professor emeritus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he wrote and taught others to write, his books examine the history and lore of one-room country schools, barns, mills, breweries, and cheese. Apps teaches classes at The Clearing in Door County.
Reprise Theater was established to channel the artistic talent, time and energy of older adults who are interested in the theater. It serves as a community production company and is one of the organizations involved in a Dane County theater coalition, which undertook the rehabilitation of the Esquire movie theater for use as a live theater performance facility.
Years ago, Robert Gard chose Rhinelander as the site to establish a grassroots learning environment for the arts – now known as the successful Rhinelander School of the Arts. The community also was one of the five locales for the research conducted in Gard’s 1966 grant from the National Council on the Arts. Today, the arts flourish in the area through the School of the Arts, the Northern Arts Council, the Historical Society, Museum, District Library, and many community collaborators, such as Nicolet College.
Peterson’s creative work as professor of theater arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison integrated fields of theater, music history and culture and captured the spirit and heritage of early Wisconsin. His many music/historical performance productions celebrated Wisconsin and were strongly influenced by Bob Gard. In retirement, he pursues new-found artistic interests. With his wife, Joan, he founded Ginkgo Press; they write travel books on food, with research taking them to Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico.
Children’s author and illustrator Kevin Henkes has written nearly 50 books for children. He sold his first manuscript in 1981 to Greewillow Press, the first publisher he approached on a trip to New York at the age of 19. His books have received the Caldecott Honor award and national ‘best book” honors from A Child Magazine, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Horn Book Fanfare, American Bookseller, New York Public Library and other presit5ge book review panels. All ages delight in Henkes’ books. The New York Times lauded Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, which has been adapted to theater and music productions.
Robert Hill, poet, fiction writer and scholar, is an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. She is an associate professor English and director of the American Indian Studies Program At the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Two collections of poetry were published under the name of Roberta Hill Whiteman. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. She was awarded a Faculty Development Award in creative Arts and a Lila Wallace Readers’ Digest Award, which enabled her to complete a two-volume biography about her grandmother, Dr. Lillie Rosa Minoka-Hill, the second American Indian woman physician.
Ron Wallace is Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught since 1972. He co-directs the Creative Writing program and is editor of the University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series. He has written over 600 poems, books, stories and essays, published in prestigious magazines and anthologies across the country. His writing, teaching, and arts development awards are numerous, ranging from the 1998 Lynde and Harry Bradly Major Achievement Award (Lifetime) to the 1984 Distinguished Teaching Award and multiple-year recognition by the Wisconsin Arts Board, Council for Wisconsin Writers, and ACLS Fellowships.