Patron of the Year Awards: South Shore Arts Honors Revitalization of Poster Series
South Shore Arts honored the Northwest Indiana Forum, John Davies and board members Connie Skozen and Danette Garza as Patrons of the Year at the 15th Annual Beaux Arts Ball, all for their commitment to promoting our region through the “Just Around the Corner” series of South Shore posters.
The Forum was honored for revitalizing the South Shore Poster Arts Series, creating South Shore Poster Arts Management, Inc. (SSPAM, a joint venture between the Forum and South Shore Arts), and originating the new “Innovation” series of posters, the first of which will be unveiled next January.
Karen Lauerman, Forum Marketing and Communications Director, commented, “The Forum is honored to be counted among the many patrons of the arts in northwest Indiana. The South Shore Poster art represents more than life along the South Shore Line. It showcases the beauty and strength of our region and illustrates our never ending desire to achieve.”
The new series, which was launched in the mid-1990s by John Davies when he worked for the Northwest Indiana Forum, was based on the iconic images from the South Shore railroad posters of the 1920s and ’30s by Samuel Insull, then owner of the South Shore Line. Insull launched an aggressive marketing campaign producing a set of fifty colorful, artistic posters, which attracted people from Illinois and elsewhere to the sand dunes and steel mills of Northwest Indiana.
The current series of posters builds upon the grand tradition of the posters from the 1920s. These new images capture the spirit of the region by showing a thriving and diverse 21st century community and are employed as an economic development and marketing tool to promote the region. This highly effective use of the arts is quite possibly unique in the entire country as an economic development tool for promoting a region’s quality of life.
Connie Skozen, a past Board President of South Shore Arts, has served on the board of South Shore Poster Art Management since before the management agreement was formalized in 2007. As a longtime South Shore Arts board member and supporter, she has long recognized the impact that the arts have in the Calumet Region. “Everyone needs beauty in his or her life,” she says, “and I’d like to foster that––and help others see how important the arts are at the same time.” Connie is the Business Manager at Burke Costanza & Cuppy, LLP, in Merrillville.
Danette Garza has been a member of the South Shore Arts Board since 2003. She works in Crown Point as an Attorney for Austgen, Kuiper & Associates, P.C. Danette’s personal interest in art brought her to South Shore Arts. Most recently, she has become an integral part of the role South Shore Arts is playing in the management of the highly successful “Just Around the Corner” South Shore Poster campaign, volunteering her time and legal expertise. “I love art, and since I have limited time to actually create it, my board position allows me to participate by promoting the arts to the community.”
Danette was responsible for drawing up the Management Agreement between South Shore Arts and the Northwest Indiana Forum that created South Shore Poster Art Management. Danette is an attorney and a C.P.A., who graduated from Indiana University with a BS in Accounting and an MS in Business Administration. She received her Juris Doctorate from the Valparaiso School of Law.
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