Kayenta gets colorful makeover at street painting festival; STGnews Photo Gallery

Written by Dave Amodt
April 27, 2015
Rebecca Pletsch of Provo recreates a Rembrandt work in chalk at the Kayenta Street Painting Festival, Ivins, Utah, April 26, 2015 | Photo by Dave Amodt, St. George News

IVINS – The fifth annual Kayenta Street Painting Festival at the Kayenta Art Village in Ivins got off to a rocky start as windy and rainy weather Saturday made it difficult if not impossible for artists to work on their al fresco designs.

However, warmer weather prevailed on Sunday, and the streets of the art village were transformed with colorful murals created in chalk.

Founded by artist Aimee Bonham and organized and sponsored by the Kayenta Arts Foundation, this year’s festival featured 18 professional and semiprofessional artists as well as 12 school teams, Judith Kapuscinki, chair of the arts foundation board of directors, said.

Rain washed out several of the high school teams’ work, Kapuscinski said, so this year, instead of awarding prizes for the top three, each high school team that participated received a trophy for their efforts despite the weather.

One of the highlights of the festival was a three-dimensional piece with a southwest design featuring Utah’s famous Delicate Arch which was commissioned as a permanent piece and created by Bonham.

“I guess you could say the painting, the imagery was kind of like an idea between me and one of the owners of Kayenta,” Bonham said. “We kind of had this idea about putting some Utah imagery in it … it was kind of fun.”

Overall the painting, which was started on March 18, Bonham said, took about 140 hours of work to complete.

Other festival highlights included live entertainment, food vendors and a children’s art area. For $5, children received a box of chalk and their own square to create an original art work, which when viewed together, created a mosaic of children’s art.

Click on photo to enlarge it, then use your left-right arrow keys to cycle through the gallery. 

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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2015, all rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dave Amodt grew up in St. George, Utah, loving anything to do with the outdoors. By day, you'll find him out repairing air conditioners and furnaces and in his free time, he loves photography, mountain biking, hiking, ATV-ing, astronomy, and rappelling. He loves meeting new people and getting to know about them and their stories. He's having fun working with St George News.com.

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