Hands-on Art
Note: Cancellations will be refunded up to 7 days prior to the event, minus ticketing fees.
Suzanne Gibson: Shapes and Shadows in the Shifting Sun
Sat September 20, 2025 @ 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Cost: $25
Minimum of 1 / Maximum of 25 / All ability levels
Join Suzanne for a lesson in Shapes and Shadows as we explore the variety of challenges with the shifting sun. Learn how to spot and recognize the “Sweet Spot” of a plein air painting in this paint- along session. Work will be demonstrated in oils / water mixables – suitable for all artists, all skill levels, all mediums.
Bring your supplies.
Suzanne was born in northern England, and has lived in southern California for over 40 years. As an artist and designer, Suzanne has her BA in Interior Design and has been teaching art for over 25 years.
In 2025, Suzanne was added to the faculty at the Plein Air convention and Expo as an ambassador to the scholarship and young artist program.
In 2023 she added Escalante, Utah to her list of favorite
places to paint, and in 2024 participated and was awarded 2nd Place in the Drawing category with her ink drawing of the People’s Exchange.
Learn more about Suzanne’s art at https://suzannes-studio-fine-art-design-art-instruction.square.site/
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Kevin Berend & Grace Welker: “Where I’m From” Poetry Workshop
Sat September 20, 2025 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pmEscalante, 84726
Cost: Free
Minimum of 2 / Maximum of 20 / All ability levels
Like visual art, writing offers a window onto our relationship with the land. Poetry provides a unique perspective to reflect on those relationships. In this workshop, we’ll read and analyze George Ella Lyon’s famous poem “Where I’m From”, then use it as a template to create our own versions from our own life experiences. Participants will be invited to share their work and engage in discussion about process, style, and technique.
Instructors will provide copies of George Ella Lyon’s poem “Where I’m From.”
Students should bring a notebook, pen/pencil. Students should bring a notebook, pen/pencil.
Kevin Berend is an environmental scientist and freelance writer who lives in Escalante, where he organizes a local creative writing group. His work has appeared in Adirondac, Appalachia, and Northern Woodlands. You can read more of his work at <<ww.highergroundblog.net>>.
Grace Welker, MEd, MFA, is a lifelong reader, writer, and traveler, who currently lives in Escalante. She channeled her passion for communication first into a career in English as a Second/Foreign Language, then into editorial direction and content curation in the fields of holistic health and personal transformation. She is the author of Oasis Pages: Teen Writing Quest, an engaging roadmap for developing a daily writing habit.
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Lonny Granston: Paint Together on Smokey Mountain Road
Tue September 23, 2025 @ 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Cost: none!
Minimum of 2 / Maximum of 40 / All ability levels
A 10 minute drive south of town on 2 wheel drive Smokey Mountain road takes us to the northern boundary of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument where we will draw the attractive butte just to the east. Littered with boulders and topped by cliffs dotted with junipers, it is an enticing subject to draw. In late September, it has great shadows before 11 am and after 3pm.
Bring the media and substrate of your choosing to this event. Lonny will be using pastels, but will be available for artistic guidance and comic relief.
Laurence “Lonny” Granston started life as an artist, played doctor and triathlete for a while, then returned to his easel. He has little formal training in painting, and as a result has gravitated toward pastels, which are similar to the crayons he scribbled with on the walls as a child. A multiyear participant in the plein air event, Lonny has spent decades hiking in, biking in, kayaking in, getting lost in and now painting in the area which now comprises Escalante- Grand Staircase National Monument. He has lived and practiced medicine the last 35 years in Boulder, Colorado. During that tenure, he somehow managed to remain married to the same wife for 30 years, assisted in raising a remarkable young woman and stayed out of the criminal justice system. He is represented by Ana’s Gallery in Boulder and Osmosis Gallery in Niwot, Colorado.
You can see more of his work at https://www.lagvisualarts.com/ and follow him at @lagvisualarts.
Find out more »Helga Watkins: What is a Good Painting?
Fri September 26, 2025 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Cost: $20
Minimum of 8 / Maximum of 14 / All ability levels
We will survey the work of artists, historians and theorists, and examine intriguing and unresolved debates about the nature of art and the question of what makes a given work of art good (or not). Although a vast subject, this intensive mini-seminar will point to the larger historical and cultural context for making art, and on a more personal level, can help inform and clarify your own aesthetic and philosophical position as an artist.
To a plein air landscape artist, contemporary art theory may appear an arcane and irrelevant topic (at best) or at worst, an antithetical agenda that if engaged with threatens to drain the very life out of art making. This mini-seminar will combine presentations and discussions to demystify some important concepts in art theory.
Helga Watkins has had a wide-ranging career in graphic, environmental and experiential design, as well as higher education. She recently retired from her professorship at the University of Las Vegas Nevada where she founded the graphic design Graphic Design and Media degree program and taught in the Entertainment Engineering and Design program.
Helga works and paints from her fabrication shop and studio in Kanab, Utah.
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Raymond King Shurtz: Short Fiction using Landscape Paintings
Fri September 26, 2025 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Cost: $25
Minimum of 3 / Maximum of 12 / All ability levels
In this session, we will be using a plein air painting of your choice from the festival to write a short fiction story. The first hour we will talk about short fiction and choose the painting we will write from. The second hour we will write our story, integrating character, setting, conflict, plot and theme from our painting. The last hour we will read our stories and talk about the readings. This is a magical way to work!
Western Interiors
“…It was as if suddenly the sky and cliffs were bound to these men whose ancestors had stood in the same spot, three hundred years before, when there were no weathermen to explain the way and why the violent sky moved…”
Please bring a computer or notebook and a cell phone with a camera if possible.
Raymond King Shurtz has written more than 30 plays, three published with Samuel French and Anchorage Press/Dramatic Publishing. The Founding Artistic Director of Playwright’s Workshop Theatre in Phoenix, Raymond produced eighty new plays in his 12-year tenure with the company. In 1998, he began teaching, theatre, film and humanities at Metro Arts, a high school for the performing and visual arts in Phoenix, Arizona, where he taught and produced another ten years of new theatre. His play, Blue Baby, A Memoir won the Playwriting Fellowship in 2003 from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Since 2008, he has worked as a free-lance director, actor, writer, and musician.
In 2009, Raymond produced and performed his one man show, Bohemian Cowboy at The Elephant Theatre, which was the ‘pick of the week’ in The LA Weekly, and subsequently performed it approximately seventy-five times in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Southern Utah, and twenty-three shows in Austin, Texas. He also fronts a country/rock/western band, Out on Bail, and also performs solo acoustic shows for Hilton Hotels. His Anthology, ‘Seven Plays of the American West’ was released in 2019 by Five Sisters Press. All of his plays are available on Amazon, Dramatic Publishing, Samuel French, and Five Sisters Press.
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Tera Connor: Create a Gourd Birdhouse
Sat September 27, 2025 @ 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm
In this engaging art class, you will create a birdhouse for your cherished feathered companions.
Cost: $25
Minimum of 10 / Maximum of 15 / All ability levels
Students are invited to bring an apron or a paint shirt. In this engaging art class, you will create a birdhouse for your cherished feathered companions. You’ll have the chance to choose a gourd from various sizes and shapes. Next, students will meticulously clean and scrape the gourds to get them ready for their new role as birdhouses. We will be using drills for this project. A beautiful stain will be applied to the exterior of each gourd. By the end of the class, students will take home their very own gourd birdhouse.
Tera Connor, a former elementary school teacher, has transitioned into a passionate gourd gardener. Gardening in Sandy Valley, NV, she harvests and dries her own gourds. With a love for repurposing and crafting, Tera has spent the last 15 years creating gourd birdhouses, delighting in hanging them around her home for the enjoyment of local birds.
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