Awarding arts' creators

Long before their creations hang on gallery walls, find a home on bookstore shelves or spin loudly on CD players, there is a largely silent cadre of working artists following their muses and often craving that big break that affirms their passion, or at least pays some of the bills.
And the winners were:
GRAPHIC DESIGN

Bill Caywood

MIXED MEDIA

Beth Gilmore

FILM

Brittany Hailes/Wes Edwards

POETRY

Jeff Havens

PAINTING

Emma Kingbeil

ILLUSTRATION

Kay Meadows

SHORT STORY

Carly Anne Bleich

PHOTOGRAPHY

Kelly Perry

MUSIC MALE

Tommy Busby

MUSIC FEMALE

Ali Handal

MUSIC BAND

Strange Celebrity

That creative cadre was not silent Saturday as the 2004 Starving Artist Awards were held at Exit/In. The event put on by Sensored, a Nashville-based online arts publication, embraces and celebrates the arts community - including artists that may have not yet, and may never gain commercial acceptance.

Sensored was born in 1998 through the direction of publisher Trey Mitchell, a graphic designer and photographer who relocated to Nashville 10 years ago from Louisiana.

"Nashville didn't have just one entity solely dedicated to the arts, and there are so many awards shows out there that they all get confusing to me," Mitchell said. "We decided there should be one just for the arts."

The weekend event, which included several live music and dramatic performances, drew an eclectic crowd, including Nashville attorney and arts supporter Bart Durham, who presented an award with local performance artist Sideshow Bennie.

Winners, whose names were pulled from stapled fast-food bags and written on food cartons, were selected from more than 300 entries. To learn more about Sensored and the Starvies, visit sensored.com.