Pursuit of Purpose Awards

The Pursuit of Purpose Awards recognize individuals who are making significant contributions in the artistic areas of our event and helping to develop the next generation of artists.

This year’s honorees are:

Joan Morris

Joan Morris is a fashion designer, fashion illustrator, and educator. She has worked as an illustrator and designer in the bridal industry, and a designer and business owner in the children’s wear industry. Her past designs have been sold in high-end stores and shown in national magazines. Currently, she works as a pattern consultant for children’s wear manufacturers. She has also served as reviewer and contributing editor for the fourth edition of the textbook, Pattern Making for Fashion Design, by Helen Joseph-Armstrong.

Joan Morris has served on the Board of Directors of the Boston Regional Chapter of The Fashion Group International. Additionally, her active involvement with the breast cancer awareness advocacy program inspired her to institute a program creating and constructing new style hospital garments designed by her students for use in the Women’s Imaging Center of Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

Dan McCole

Watercolorist Dan McCole, is a graduate of Vesper George School of Art, completing a full course in fine arts and illustration. Dan’s main source of instruction was under the guidance of James Wingate Parr, a most accomplished painter and teacher and one who excelled in watercolor. After graduation, Dan entered the newspaper world as a part-time editorial artist with the Boston Herald Traveler. In response to personal and family obligations, he put his painting life on hold and morphed into a career in the newspaper business.

He worked at the Boston Herald in the advertising department for ten years, founded a weekly newspaper (the Weymouth News in Weymouth, Massachusetts) and served in all related publishing capacities for another ten years. After selling the business, he remained engaged in similar enterprises with other publications. He was honored in 1981 with a first place award for the Best Column in the New England Press Association’s annual newspaper contest.

In 1985 he returned to the Herald and served as production news editor and late city room deskman, as well as an occasional columnist and feature writer. He retired from the Herald and the newspaper business in June, 2005.

He now lives in South Boston, his place of birth. Dan was a partner in a Seaport Gallery from 2001 through 2008. Through the South Boston Community Health Center Dan works with local youth in an art-based program called Young at Arts. Most notably the group set up and produced the Lighthouses on Broadway art-project and has made three working trips to the Katrina ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana gulf coast, to help in cleanup and reconstruction efforts.

Dan hosts the hour-long, weekly BNN TV Channel 9 show. The show is produced by the South Boston Arts Association and is about South Boston personalities and features activities in the local arts community.

He is chairman of the South Boston Arts & Cultural Center Task Force, a non-profit group seeking a permanent home for an arts center in South Boston; and serves on the Laboure Annual Spring Fundraising committee.

Dan’s studio is in “The Distillery”, 516 East Second Street, South Boston, MA 02127.

Website: www.danmccole.com

Angie Frissore

Angela Frissore is a photographer, writer, and comedy producer hailing from a teeny tiny little town near Boston. A writer for examiner.com since 2009, her current projects include the Boston Comedy Scene Examiner, Boston Horror Examiner, and Boston Concert Photography Examiner. A cancer warrior at heart, Frissore is also the chair of the Greater Boston Comedy Relay – a series of live comedy shows throughout the Boston area raising funds and awareness for the American Cancer Society’s life-saving work and mission.

A fundraising effort on behalf of the Boston comedy community benefiting the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life, the Comedy Relay started in 2010. Throughout April and May, 30 comedians such as Lamont Price, Dave Russo, Matt Donaher, Bethany Van Delft and so many more as they dole out the hilarity all for the sake of charity.

Didi Emmons

Didi is the founder and Executive Chef of “Take Back the Kitchen” (established 2006), a dynamic non-profit cooking program designed to mitigate health disparities in the Roxbury and Dorchester communities at the Haley House Bakery Café in Roxbury, Ma. This program teaches and empowers children, teenagers, and adults to take charge of what they eat and to cook for themselves. Preceding this, Didi opened Haley House Bakery Café as Executive Chef in the fall of 2005 and ran the café for 3 years. The café serves affordable healthy foods in a neighborhood where access to wholesome food is minimal. The café is CORI-friendly and hires within the community.

Didi is also the Trans-fat Consultant to the Boston Public Health Commission, as well as a support for neighboring cities like Lynn and Chelsea. Since the ban of trans fats in 2008, Didi has been providing technical support for Boston food service establishments.
Didi has been hired by Project Bread to create a cookbook over the next year for school cafeterias nationwide. This book will help cafeteria chefs prepare foods that youth respond to, with an emphasis on whole fresh foods and ethnic foods.

Didi has authored three cookbooks. Her first book was the bestselling. Vegetarian Planet, which sold over 200,000 copies. Entertaining for a Veggie Planet, her second book, was winner of the 2004 IACP Award (formerly the Julia Child award) in the Healthy and Special Diet category. Her third cookbook, Edible Planet (Chelsea Green Publishing), due out in the fall of 2011 celebrates 46 edible greens, herbs, and weeds and the eco-conscious female farmer that grows them.

Didi received a B.S. in foodservice management from New York University and a Grand Diplome from La Varenne Ecole de Cuisine in Paris.

She has written for the Boston Globe, Cooking Light, Vegetarian Times, Edible Boston and Food Arts, among other publications. She was the chef/co-owner of Veggie Planet, a vegetarian pizza restaurant in Harvard Square, Cambridge for seven years.