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Represented artists, most of whom were in attendance at Friday night’s classy hors d'oeuvres and Blue Bunny ice cream event sponsored by Zion’s Bank, include James Christensen, Matt Clark, Silvia Davis, Susan Geissler|1|, Paul Graf, Edward Hlavka, Franz Johansen, Nate Johansen, Bryce Pettit, Gary Lee Price|2|, Jim Rennert |3|, Edward Spears |4|, Grant Speed, LeRoy Transfield, L’Deane Trueblood |0|, Eric Wilson |5| and Jeannine Young.

If you haven’t visited St. George lately, Main Street, remains a pedestrian-friendly street. It is the location of the annual St. George Art Festival (April 14th & 15th) and the street-side bronze sculptures make it a fun and educational way to spend a few hours in addition to visiting the Blue Bunny ice-cream store and the many restaurants, antique stores, and art galleries.

“We have become very spoiled in St. George,” says Dixie Arts Foundation chair Sara Urquhart. “With this program, we have become used to seeing a very high level of art literally ‘around the corner.’ Under the direction of project co-chairs Cindy Trueblood and Matt Clark, the 2006 exhibit builds upon that tradition.”

St. George’s Art Around the Corner event creates a unique venue for artist, investor, and general public. Dixie’s tempered climate creates the perfect atmosphere for this type of outdoor venue. If you head south this year to enjoy the warmth and many recreational activities, you will be pleasantly surprised with the variety of sculptures on Main Street. Who knows, you might be tempted to put down roots and stay. As one of this year’s “Partners in the Arts” award recipients, Doug Alder, said about St. George, “Sunshine gets ‘em here, culture keeps ‘em here.”

St. George Art Museum UP: Two exhibits opening April 8th and continuing through June.

::Window of West: Views from the American Frontier, an exhibit from the Trust for Museum Exhibitions in Washington D.C., continues through the month of June and features 60 paintings from the Arthur J. Phelan Collection. This exhibit is not just the West that you have seen in the movies, and not the stuff of legend, but rather the West as a newly-minted place - a land of surprise, quick settlement and authentic grandeur, as seen by the artists who personally explored the West and visually documented what they discovered. These artworks were selected to give an historically accurate cross-section of what really happened in the expansion of the West. They depict the people who moved west from the Mississippi, the land they passed through and chose for their new homes, and the settlements they created. They examine how the West was gradually transformed over the decades as the continent filled and the frontier receded and then disappeared.

Included in the exhibit are works by the greats - Frederic Remington, Carl Wimar, Alfred Jacob Miller |6|, Karl Bodmer, Albert Bierstadt |7|, and John Frederick Kensett, as well as Lone Wolf, who was perhaps the first academically trained Native American artist. However, this exhibition is unique in that it emphasizes the views of lesser-known men and women artists, personally recording what they observed in the newly-founded country.

"What I've looked for in the pictures is some kind of message about the past," says Phelan, talking about an interest which grew from his graduate studies in American history at Yale. "I use art as a way to try to visualize the past - it becomes my personal time machine. Let's not take John Wayne's West or the Indian aficionado's West as the only West. There were many Wests."

Rather than looking for European roots in the subject and technique of the paintings he has collected, Phelan has been more interested in the artist's documentation of how the landscape, settlements, and people of the West actually appeared to the artists capturing these subjects on canvas. His collection is our Window on the West, a balanced, historical view from the artists themselves.

::The Regional Exhibit returns to the St. George Art Museum in time for the Art Festival on Main Street (April 13th & 14th). The Regional is an exhibition with artists from Arizona, Nevada, and Utah invited to submit their work in any media or style completed in the prior two years to be juried for inclusion.

Brigham Young University Art Museum's Director, Campbell Gray juried this year's exhibition and chose 24 artists and 34 pieces that will be on display in the Main Gallery. These artists are: Robert T. Barrett, Court Bennett, John Berry, Tom Biddulph, Deborah Bramall, Linnie Brown, Daniel Dolberg, McGarren Flack, H. C. Gilmore, Brent Godfrey, Diane Graebner, Thomas Hoffman, Brian P. Hoover, M. Kelsch, Robert Lefkow, Beverly Canty Marshall, Bob Moeller, Greg Murray, Nanette Olson, Lyle Pack, Fiona Phillips, Alexander Selytin, Marilyn Stillman, and LuAnn Williams.