The Kanab Arts Board is excited to start the new year with a line-up of five local artists for our community. This quarter, we will be enjoying a variety of artworks from pencil portraits, watercolors, photography to handwoven baskets and award-winning quilts. We invite everybody to the opening reception on January 18, 2024, 5 - 6 p.m., at the Kane County Hospital Lobby.
Our first artist in the line-up is Amy Burggraaf who lives in Kanab with her husband and soon to be five children. She has a deep love for music and visual arts, and has dabbled in almost every medium from oil, acrylic and watercolor, to ceramics and polymer clays. Amy is mostly self-taught but she has taken a few art classes. Her favorite method is to let each piece determine which medium will best feature its unique personality and run from there.
Next, we have Bethany Ebling who enjoys capturing beautiful, fleeting moments in time, and sharing them with others. In Bethany’s more than 40 years of photography, she has exhibited her works in Maryland, Washington D.C. and Utah. She has also received a number of awards for her work which includes landscapes, natural abstracts, travel, architecture, flora, fauna, still life and black and whites. Originally from Indiana, Bethany fell in love with the natural beauty of Utah more than 30 years ago and has since made this place her home.
Jake Hartner has loved art and the outdoors from childhood, two interests that fused together when he began a career in wilderness therapy at the Anasazi Foundation in 2009. Now based in Kanab, he teaches ancestral skills, serves as a desert guide and specializes in basket making and primitive pottery. He also teaches how to make bow drill fires, atlatl’s, flutes, drums, bundle bows, didgeridoos, gourd bowls, cordage, knife safety and wilderness navigation. You can see Jake on season one episode six of Discovery Channel’s “Bushcraft Build-Off.”
We also have Sylvia Borschel Lewis, an art quilt artist. Sylvia, who was born and raised in Salt Lake City, developed a passion for fiber arts at a very young age. She was inspired by her mother’s sewing and knitting, her aunt’s crocheting and sisterin- law’s quilt making. Living in Sacramento has exposed her to the world of art quilting, where she delved into new techniques and shared her knowledge by teaching quilting classes. Returning to Utah, she joined online art quilt groups, participating in national exhibitions and contributing several pieces to Donna Marcinkowski DeSoto’s “Inspired By” series. Her quilts range from collage style creations to abstract pieces, and draw inspiration from local scenery and Native American stories, consistently reflecting a theme of peace.
Lastly but definitely not the least, we have burgeoning artist Rain Stotlar who was born and raised in Kanab and is currently a Junior in Kanab High School. She finds faces fascinating and has been drawing people for as long as she can remember. Rain has also been a competitor in the Kanab Arts Board Chalk Art festival and has consistently won top places in the last two years.
We encourage everybody to come and meet our artists during the opening reception. The hospital is hosting the event and will be serving food and drinks for all guests to enjoy. The artworks are exhibited at the Kane County Hospital and Kanab City Library. After the artist introductions and viewing of the artworks in the hospital lobby, we will invite guests to walk over to the library to see Sylvia Lewis’ art quilts.
The Exhibition is open during hospital and library business hours and will run until March 27, 2024. For inquiries, or if you’re a local artist interested in exhibiting, please email KanabArts@Kanab.Utah.Gov or message us on Facebook or Instagram.
