Spectrum 25 Awards Ceremony Stories and Pictures

Arnie Fenner, John Fleskes, and Kathy Chu backstage while preparing for the Spectrum Awards Ceremony.

Hi everyone!

We have a special treat. This is written by Kathy and John and shares stories and pictures from the Spectrum 25 awards ceremony. The pictures are at the end of the post for those who may not want to read the whole thing.

The Spectrum 25 awards ceremony was held at the historic Brookledge Theater in Los Angeles, California on Saturday, May 5th. This special venue, owned by LA’s legendary private club for professional magicians, The Magic Castle, made this ceremony exceptionally unique for Spectrum’s 25th anniversary.

Since we were not hosting Spectrum Fantastic Art Live this year in Kansas City, we took this as an opportunity to hold the awards ceremony in Southern California for the first time. Since it was the 25th anniversary of Spectrum Fantastic Art, we wanted it to be something special. With the help of Bob Self, we were able to get in contact with Erika Larson, who manages and takes care of the Brookledge theatre. Because this venue was so exclusive and was an invite only theatre, we met with Erika several months in advance to see if we could hold our ceremony there. After spending some time taking a tour of the space we instantly fell in love with it. After sharing more about Spectrum and the importance of its community, Erika was gracious in her willingness to let us use the theatre for our ceremony. We are so grateful she did, as it made this year’s ceremony an event to remember.

Every year, the ceremony takes an extensive amount of time to plan, and this year was no different. We normally start planning about a month in advance. The first thing we work on is finding an artist be a speaker for each category. We try to find artists from each specific category because we ask them to do a small introduction that relates to the topic before announcing the award recipient. Some people are excited to have an opportunity to speak and be a part of the ceremony, others who may have no or limited public speaking experience bravely take on the responsibility. We make ourselves available to bounce ideas off of and to help mold their speech when asked. We were lucky this year and found a wide variety of speakers, even pulling in a few shy artists who opened up and did wonderfully once on stage.

During the time we look for speakers, we also start contacting all the award nominees to see who would be available to join us for the evening. We also sent out a newsletter and put out posts on our social media accounts letting people know to contact us if they wanted to attend the event. Because of the intimacy of this year’s venue we wanted to make sure nominees, presenters and those who were included in Spectrum 25 could be there. Due to limited seating, we had to create a wait list for everyone else who reached out. We were grateful to squeeze in all of the nominees, presenters and their guests.

The next thing we did, was reach out to see if we could find people in the L.A. area who could help us run the projector and help take pictures at the event. We were lucky and found a San Jose State University alumni, Justin Vu, and professional photographer, Mark Berry, to work the event.

The next step was making sure we had everything we needed for the ceremony. That included creating the background graphics and videos for the ceremony. We also had to make all the award name cards (including the phonetic spelling for each award recipient) and all the envelopes. These are all made specially for each year’s ceremony. We also created a special 25th anniversary award ceremony print to hand out to guests. We also wanted to make sure we brought our Spectrum office copies to get them signed by the artists who were in the books. We keep one copy of each book (Spectrum 21-24) for display in our office, we take these to all the Spectrum events we attend to have them signed by the artists who attend. Since we were driving down to L.A. from Santa Cruz, we also decided to load up John’s truck with previous Spectrum books to hand out to the guests as well. Everyone who attended received a free copy of Spectrum as a special gift.

We drove down a day before the event so we could start setting up and have enough time to be ready for the ceremony. On the way, we picked up snacks and refreshments for the ceremony. We arrived in L.A. midday on Friday and picked up the awards from William Stouts house. We had them shipped there as it was easier and safer than shipping them to Santa Cruz and driving them down. We then drove straight to the theatre to start prepping for the ceremony itself. We were able to drop everything off for the show and get the awards set up.

The day of the ceremony was definitely a hectic one. Due to some technical difficulties, we were unable to use the projector provided by the theatre and ended up needing to find something to show all the background art and graphics needed for the ceremony. With the help of John’s smartphone, we were able to narrow down some options and were in and out of Best Buy within 15 minutes with a brand new large screen TV. Because of the different format, we had to figure out how to project the background videos we had created without showing any of the extra video details and be able to time all the videos to each speaker and award winner. Lucky for us, Justin Vu showed up right on time and was able to help us get the computer and TV set up properly. Colin and Kristine Poole were also miracle workers and showed up early to help us set up the snack and refreshment table. We also had all the presenters arrive a little early so they could do a run through and practice their introductions.

After a quick change out of our street clothes and into our formal outfits, finally, we were ready.

The doors opened at 6:30pm and the guests started to arrive. Because of all our pre-planning the ceremony ran smoothly. We are so grateful to everyone who helped us run the event because without them, we would not have had such a successful evening. All the guests were happy and everyone had a wonderful time. For us, this is what makes the months of pre-planning worth it. To be able to create a gathering where the Spectrum community can get together and celebrate is not only meaningful, it helps to encourage others. All the award recipients had an emotional response and made sincere and expressive acceptance speeches. Everyone who attended left with a want to do more to create and inspire others to do the same. This is why Spectrum exists and why we find the awards ceremony to be so important to have and to share.

Below are pictures from the event, thank you to everyone who joined us for the evening and we hope to see everyone at next year’s event!

The Spectrum 25 Awards set out before the ceremony

From left to right: John Fleskes (Spectrum director), Kathy Chu (Flesk VP), and master of ceremonies for the evening, Bob Self (publisher of Baby Tattoo Books.)

Spectrum regular and one of the nicest guys you can meet at a party, Luc Desmarchelier.

John and Kathy talking with Te Hu prior to the ceremony starting. Te ran over his opening talk with us before the show began.

Our magician guest who performed during the event talking with William Stout (left).

Bob Self, Joel Beren and Olivia De Berardinis graced us with their appearance.

Bob Self, Master of Ceremonies, energetically welcoming the guests.

Colin and Kristine Poole, both involved with Spectrum for many years, introducing the Rising Star Award, which they created and announce each year to highlight an outstanding newcomer to the field.

Miranda Meeks graciously accepting the Rising Star Award. She had arrived earlier that day after flying in from Utah. Until an hour before the show we were unsure if she would make it, and we were thrilled when she arrived.

Te Hu, introducing the Advertising Category. This was his first time on the Spectrum stage and he was energetic and charmed everyone.

Laurel Blechman surprised and happily accepting accepting the Advertising Silver Award. Laurel gave an emotional acceptance speech while dedicating the award to Glen Orbik.

Tim O’Brien, the president of the Society of Illustrators, introducing the Book Category.

Victo Ngai, most nominated in a single year and one of the best of her generation, accepting the Gold Award for the Book category.

William Stout, introducing the significance of the Comic category and how much it has changed throughout the years.

Craig Elliott gave a memorable introduction to the Concept Art category.

Anthony Francisco, Marvel Studios senior visual development artist passionately accepting the Silver Award for the Concept Art category.

Wangjie Li was very honored to accept the Gold Award for the Concept Art category.

Arnie Fenner presenting the Memorial to honor artists who passed away in 2017.

Brynn Metheney, who has been in Spectrum many times and has attended many past Spectrum events, introducing the Dimensional category.

Jessica Dalva, gracefully accepting the Silver Award for the Dimensional category.

Paul Sullivan, introducing the Editorial category with an extremely well-researched and educational talk.

Tim O’Brien, who was very surprised, accepting the Silver Award in the Editorial category.

Edward Kinsella III gave a heartfelt speech when receiving the Gold Award in the Editorial category.

Karla Ortiz excitedly introducing the Institutional Category shared a story of her experience while being on the Spectrum 25 jury.

Alina Chau, introducing the Unpublished category and the opportunity it presents to artists who challenge themselves to work outside of conventional projects when submitting to Spectrum.