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Kimball Arts Festival honors artists

The 2023 Arts Festival on Saturday evening.
Leslie Thatcher
/
KPCW
The 2023 Arts Festival on Saturday evening.

Sixteen artists were recognized as standouts in their craft at this year’s Kimball Arts Festival.  

Paige Whitcomb - who is a young photographer using a very old photographic technique called wet collodion or tin type - was named as Best Overall Artist in the 54th edition of the Park City Arts Festival. She uses a camera built in the 19th century that requires a chemical process similar to film development but on a piece of tin (there are no negatives) to create one-of-a-kind images.

Paige Whitcomb was named Best Overall Artist for the 2023 Park City Kimball Arts Festival.
Leslie Thatcher
Paige Whitcomb was named Best Overall Artist for the 2023 Park City Kimball Arts Festival.

“It's one of the earliest forms of photography that was commercially used. So, it was originally used in the 1860s and then it died out in the 1870s because you can't make prints from it. So today, that's novel, because we have digital photography, and just living in this digital age, we can make endless editions of things. So, I wanted to work with a process that took it back to where it was more tactile, and hands on where I was in the dark room working and there was just that singular edition of the images.”

She was thrilled to be honored with the Best Overall Artist award.

“I'm very honored,” Whitcomb said. “This is a very high caliber show. And there are a lot of extremely talented artists. So yeah, shocked is an understatement.”

Kati Gyulassy lives in Park City and is both a ceramicist and painter. She was named as Best Local Artist and says she too was very surprised and honored. She enjoys both techniques, saying they have different qualities but are very complementary.

“The style is similar,” Gyulassy said. “It looks like the same artist made both. So, I think it works together.”

Leslie Thatcher
Kati Gyulassy was named as Best Local Artist in the 2023 Park City Kimball Arts Festival.

Gyulassy makes her ceramics at the Kimball Art Center and in her free time teaches classes there.

“The Kimball Art Center is amazing,” she said. “It's such a great community of artists and students and I teach oil painting as well as hand building (ceramics). I'm teaching a team class in the fall as well. So, it's just a very vibrant community and very supportive - lots of creativity. I get inspired by students and then vice versa. It's a great, great place to make art.”

Kristen Ross of Boulder, Colorado, was named as Best Emerging Artist. She says she committed to her art just five years ago. She paints vibrant colored landscapes of places she’s hiked.

“I love experimenting with color,” Ross said. “I use pretty much all acrylics and I do lots of layering. So, I’ll do like a brightly colored, usually fluorescent under-painting and then I just layer colors over that.”

Leslie Thatcher
Kristen Ross was named as Best Emerging Artist in the 2023 Park City Kimball Arts Festival.

Many of her paintings are based on photographs she’s taken while hiking in national parks, like Rocky Mountain and Arches. Ross donates a part of her proceeds to the National Park Foundation saying she thinks it’s important to support public places that everyone can go and experience nature.

As for the winning Best Emerging Artist, she says she’s flattered.

“I'm absolutely honored to have received it. This is my first year as a full-time artist, and my first year doing shows like this. So, I haven't traveled around much like selling my work. But I've been painting for about five years. And I've kind of developed my style over the past few years. But I haven't really shown or sold my work much until this past year.”

All three artists reported robust sales and were thankful for the weekend’s perfect weather.

The Best in Show award winners:

PHOTOGRAPHY - Cali Hobgood

FIBER - Sharon Tesser

DRAWING - Nha Vuu

PAINTING - Taman VanScoy

MIXED MEDIA - Ezra Siegel

WOOD - Steve Henneford

CERAMICS - Michael Schwegmann

JEWELRY - Katzie Hughes

SCULPTURE - Yves Goyatton

PRINTMAKING - Jennifer Worsley

METALWORK - Laura Baring-Gould

DIGITAL ART - Lily McAlpin

GLASS - Nick Leonoff