Neil Doody, Canon's ACT business development manager and president of CAPO since 2010, says the board - made up of practising artists and business people - has made changes in recent years to keep itself viable as an alternative, non-government source of funding for artists in the ACT region.

Part of this was the selection of artist, singer and comedian, Paul McDermott, as the new patron of CAPO. McDermott - who studied at the ANU School of Art and was a member of the comedy troupe The Doug Anthony All Stars replaced Michael Bryce, the husband of former governor-general Dame Quentin Bryce.

Doody says, "Michael Bryce was patron of 60 to 100 organisations; Paul's never been a patron before."

He says he expects McDermott to be "a very different sort of patron to Michael Bryce. We expect he will bring in a different sort of audience at CAPO functions as well".

Previously the organisation's major annual fundraiser - which included an auction of art donated by local artists - had been in the format of a ball. However, the proliferation of such functions in recent years, and the expense and effort required to organise them, led to a change in 2005 to a less formal stand-up drinks party. Having held the function at a variety of venues over the years, last year CAPO signed up with Canberra Museum and Gallery to hold its annual function there for five years.

Doody says the size of the venue and that the artworks can be exhibited before the auction, which with sponsorship provides most of the funds for grants, should boost the organisation's finances.

Businesses - like artists - get involved with supporting CAPO because they see it as good exposure, he says: "a way to get their name in front of a whole new group of people".

He says that government arts grants increasingly seem tied to having social initiatives as part of the package.

"We're free of that - we're just about the art."

That's not to say there's no social conscience involved. Last year, the inaugural Fuji Xerox Sustainable Art Award went to composer and puppeteer, Marianne Mettes. She will produce a series of shows for children involving marionettes created from toilet rolls.

Also last year, to mark the 30th anniversary of CAPO and Canberra’s 100th anniversary, the CAPO Board funded a special, one-off award. The CAPO Board 30th Anniversary Award for Established Artists was presented to Marzena Wasikowska to go to Niagara Falls to create images and develop and extend the concepts underpinning earlier digital photographic images, into a new body of work.

Alison Jackson, a silversmith, is the recipient of the Rosalie Gascoigne Memorial Award, sponsored in part by Beyond Bank. She will use the money - "a little over $3000" - to create a new range of tableware objects, using her current research and prototyping to do with the fusion of traditional silversmith techniques with industrial processes.

The 28-year-old graduate of the ANU School of Art says each piece takes between five and 90 hours to create, working by hand. Glass artist Matthew Curtis is the 2014 CAPO Fellow. The Fellowship is CAPO's own award: Curtis received $14,000.

Curtis, 49, has worked with glass for the past two decades. He says most of his work is bought by collectors in the US, where he has built up a following over many years. He moved to Queanbeyan 11 years ago.

"I've been supportive of CAPO for a number of years. So it's nice to be given the opportunity to do some work,'' Curtis says.

He is using the fellowship to fund a number of projects. One is developing a body of work with oxides that colour glass in different ways, depending on the light.

"With reflected light, from behind the glass, it's opaque and bluey-white and with transmitted light, in front of the glass, it's amber-apricot."

He is also travelling to the Tiwi Islands to work collaboratively with artist Jock Puautjimi, using the latter's designs in his glasswork, where multiple and precisely moulded components are reheated and then fused into a complex whole.

"CAPO has given me the opportunity to venture out and do some things I wouldn't normally be able to do myself."

Applications for the next round of CAPO grants close on September 15, 2014. The Art Auction and grant recipient announcement will be at Canberra Museum and Gallery on October 4. To apply and for more information on CAPO visit capo.org.au

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

The other 2013 CAPO Grant recipients:

The Workplace Research Associates Award assisted Alex Boynes with funding for the materials to construct a new modified version of the sculptural "stage" and associated costs for the performance installation - Dark Matter – which was presented at ANCA Gallery in March.

The Reading Room London Exhibition Award is open to artists from throughout Australia and the 2013 winner was Emma Beer, an ANU graduate who will travel to London to exhibit her work in constructed colour field painting and undertake research in abstraction.

The King O'Malley's Award went to Bettina Hill, whose artwork Un-Scientific builds on her previous woven paper sculptures. It is a large scale grid of woven paper, rippling with geometric curves that will line most of the walls and floor in Gallery 4 at CMAG in 2014.

The Urban Pantry Manuka Award will be used by Nic McConaghy to develop a large-scale, mixed-media composition, which seeks to express the various cultural and environmental aspects of the Australian Alps through the electro-acoustic medium.

Claire Primrose

Debra Jurss used the Capital Insurance Brokers Award in creating a freestanding series of 3D glass sculptures, to complement the related vessels that she’d made in her Canberra Glassworks residency in March 2014.

Alison Munro’s award from Sage Legal Services will support a residency at Chiang Mai University Faculty of Fine Arts in Thailand over summer, to develop new work investigating the relationship of pattern to the scientific measurement and mapping of the natural world.

Sally AdairANU

The Macquarie Wealth Award was given to Andrew TownsendSuzie Bleach

The McGrath Woden Emerging Artist Award winner was Katy Mutton. She will use this award to create a body of work intended to explore the stories and cultural context of returned servicemen, as they attempted to reintegrate into society post-conflict