Zion National Park’s Celebration of Art: The Zion Forever Project
Springdale, UT
Utah’s Zion National Park has long played host to artists, including in its earliest days to Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, Howard Russell Butler, Thomas Moran and many other famous landscape painters. Artists will once again descend upon the national park, this time for its centennial celebration.
Zion National Park’s Celebration of Art: The Zion Forever Project kicks off November 5 and continues through November 10 within the park and in nearby Springdale, Utah. The six-day show will feature a variety of events, including artist demonstrations, art discussions, a private and public art sale, and an extended exhibition and sale featuring 55 submitted works that are now available through November 10.
Artists in the show are John Cogan, Michelle Condrat, Bill Cramer, Cody Delong, George Handrahan, Buffalo Kaplinski, Roland Lee, James Mcgrew, Kate Starling and Suze Woolf.
This year’s featured artist is Arlene Braithwaite, who first visited the park in 1958 at 8 years old. “[It was] a no-fuss trip to see ‘rugged beauty’ hauling a Teardrop Trailer, it included five sets of clean underwear, Campbell’s soup (eaten out of the can) and apples. We witnessed first light on the cliffs, river waded until toes puckered and shot hiking pictures with a Kodak bellows camera. Dad bought as much film as we wanted but forbid entry into the curio shop,” she says. “I have been painting in Zion since 1989 when I first took art students from Southern Utah State College to Kolob to paint. I found the formations to be inspiring and intimidating. They still are.”
Braithwaite says part of the appeal of the park, besides its beauty, is the number of places for artists to paint. “My favorite places to paint in the park are: Observation Point at sunrise; Kolob, just before sunset; Court of the Patriarchs by the river, under glowing