Black and White in Springdale

Our Springdale show opened today. It is called Southern Utah in Black and White, and it features images and charcoal sketches from around southern Utah. If you are headed to Zion during June, stop and check it out. The show is at the Canyon Community Center in Springdale until July 5th. The address: 126 Lion Boulevard (Beside the Springdale Town Hall) Springdale UT 84767.

Cedar Breaks Wildflower Festival

Each year, Cedar Breaks National Monument hosts a Wildflower Festival. This year, the festival runs from July 2-July 18. To advertise the festival, the Monument publishes a nice color poster that is distributed throughout southern Utah. To produce the artwork for the poster, the Monument conducts a contest. You are looking at this year's contest winner. This is a large painting of a bristlecone pine that Valerie completed during March. Today, the National Monument selected it for its 2010 Wildflower Festival poster. Keep your eyes open for its debut.

Two Awards

The weather was quite pleasant in St. George this year. And the turn-out was great, lots more people than last year. Plus, Valerie won a pair of awards for two paintings that she made of the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument. She called the works, Lodore I and Lodore II, because they were of, you guessed it, Lodore Canyon. It was a good festival . . . and we'll likely return again next year.

St. George Arts Festival

For the second straight year, Valerie will be participating in the St. George Arts Festival. It is scheduled for April 2nd and 3rd, next Friday and Saturday. The weather in St. George can be very warm and spring-like at the beginning of April. In fact, tomorrow it is supposed to be 76F and sunny there. Unfortunately, the weather in St. George can also be cold and wet and windy at the beginning of April. Last year it was cold and wet. Those conditions really seemed to dampen the croud and kept art sales to a minimum. We are hoping for better this year. The forecast has it at partly to mostly sunny with highs in the low sixties. Should be OK, if we can get it. Of course, the worst possible conditions involve high winds. They are not in the forecast for this year's event, but they did cause considerable damage to Valerie's equipment a couple of years ago: A strong gust overnight picked up her tent and flung it into her neighbor's display, causing damage to both of them, but almost destroying Valerie's. Fortunately, Grandpa was able to rebuild it.

18th Annual Braithwaite Art Auction

We've been donating more paintings than we've been selling this year. The latest was this little gem, called South on Center. Valerie donated it to a March 3rd auction benefitting the Braithwaite Gallery at SUU. The gallery is raising money to build a new art museum on campus (the Southern Utah Museum of Art), which should be great for the area. Last time we were at the Braithwaite, to see the Jim Jones show, we saw a mock-up of the new museum. The gallery director, Reese, said that they were still haggling a little over the final design, but it looks like it will be a beautiful space. In any case, Valerie's painting drew a number of bidders during the live auction, and it eventually sold for a good price—a little above what we might normally expect to get. That is an encouraging sign since it gives some indication that art buyers find Valerie's work to be priced competitively.