People have been living in this area with its seemingly difficult environment for 10,000 years. Although the habitation has not been continuous, the Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloans) who were here between 1050 and 1200 A.D. did such a good job of adapting that they not only survived but their population increased, in part because they were a sedentary people. They raised corn, beans, and squash and supplemented it with hunting and gathering. We will go back in time and discuss how we would adapt and whether we would survive. Larry Davis has generously volunteered his services.

In February 2009, we celebrate the centennial of Wallace Stegner’s birth. Stegner wrote about virtually all of Utah’s landscapes and stories in one or another of his books.

His descriptions span the Twentieth Century, and I can think of no other writer whose work traverses so much Utah geography and history. I am spending my term as a Stegner Fellow at the University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center by taking those pieces of writing with me on the road across Utah, bringing them home to the places where they started. In school and community programs, I’ll offer excerpts from Stegner to the people who live in the locations he so insightfully memorialized in print. And I’ll ask citizens to respond in their own words. In this way, I’ll reintroduce Wallace Stegner’s work to readers, and I’ll be able to use his ideas to stimulate community dialogue. I hope people will not only enjoy the discussion-but that they will want to tell their own stories.

Photo: Wallace Stegner



Well-respected authors and art historians Donna Poulton and Vern Swanson have combined their substantial knowledge and expertise to create Painters of Utah's Canyons and Deserts, a book of both historic and visual significance. Their book traces the artistic history and visual drama of the wild places in Utah's landscape. The subject will strike a responsive chord with anyone whose heart is tied to the broiling blue skies and red rock mesas of Utah's canyon country. This richly illustrated art book contains a history of artists past and present who portray Utah's landscape with paint and canvas, including artists from the past such as: Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, Samuel Coleman, Thomas Moran, Maynard Dixon, Georgia O'Keeffe, Max Ernst, Conrad Buff, Edgar Payne, LeConte Stewart, plus many of today's landscape luminaries including Valoy Eaton, Kathryn Stats, Ed Mell, Gary Ernest Smith, Clyde Aspevig, G. Russell Case, Roland Lee and others.

There will be a book signing after the presentation.
A prelude program will be presented with a variety music, some instrumental, some vocal, and a little poetry, set to music by Curtis and Diane Oberhansly, Sage Sorenson and others.






Long before he saw the Escalante canyons David Delthony was creating sculptured furniture that echoed the landscape of southern Utah. A native of New York with BA degrees from Pennsylvania’s Haverford College and the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin as well as a Master Craftsman’s Certification in Woodworking he earned while in Germany, Delthony and his ceramic artist wife, Brigitte, moved to southern Utah in 1996 where they built an art studio west of the town of Escalante. Delthony, an award-winning artist, has exhibited in Europe and the United States where his works are in numerous collections. He is the 2002 recipient of the Utah Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship award, a 2005 rewardee for the UAC Individual Artist Grant and the 2009 featured artist for the Sixth Annual Escalante Canyons Art Festival. This presentation will focus on the life and art of Delthony and his development as an artist. Funded by Envision Escalante.

Join author Frederick Swanson as he relates the adventures of “The Cowboy and the Lawyer”--two men who witnessed the scenic and geologic marvels of the Escalante region before the era of highways and tourist facilities. Starting in 1915 Dave Rust, a backcountry guide from Kanab, Utah, made extensive explorations of the Aquarius Plateau and the Escalante Canyons with his friend George C. Fraser, a Wall Street attorney who shared a deep appreciation for the amazing landscapes of the Colorado Plateau. The program includes historic photographs from their travels and excerpts from their journals, transporting you to a time when few people knew what wonders this region held.

The photographs of Ansel Adams are the best known and most recognized of any American photographer or any photographer for that matter. His photographs depict the great earth gesture of the American West in light and weathers that are magical, ethereal and elusive. In addition to being a monumental photographer, he was also a teacher and mentor along with being an environmental activist. His influence continues to reach far and wide more than 25 years after his passing.
Larry Davis is a native Utahn, born and raised in the small Carbon County mining town of Hiawatha. He received BA and MA degrees in Archaeology/Anthropology. He was a Park Manager of the Anasazi State Park in Boulder, UT for 30 years and received the Division of Parks and Recreation's Outstanding Employee and Outstanding Interpreter Awards. He is well known for his storytelling and ability to bring ancient culture to life. Since retiring in 2001, Larry has pursued his woodworking hobbies and continues speaking to groups about the ancients.

Art educator and photographer, Paula McNeill divides her time between Valdosta, Georgia, where she is an Associate Professor of Art at Valdosta State University and Escalante, Utah, where her family has had a summer home for nearly thirty years. A Southerner by birth, McNeill received her BA in Art from Arizona State University; her MA from the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque; and her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia. With an interest in community-based art, for more than ten years, McNeill has documented the art and lives of artists in southern Utah through video-taped oral history interviews. She has published some of her findings and has made numerous presentations at state and national professional meetings on this topic.

Donna L. Poulton, Ph.D., is Associate Curator of Utah and Western Art at the University of Utah's Museum of Fine Arts. She has many written articles on Utah and Western art, and is the coauthor of Utah Art, Utah Artists and a book on pioneer artist Reuben Kirkham. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Jerry C. Roundy was born in Escalante, Utah as the eighth child and fifth son of Wallace Napoleon and Ella May Griffin Roundy. He entered Brigham Young University in 1957 and received both a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Political Science and History. He later received a PhD in Western American History from BYU. Dr. Roundy taught for 33 years in the LDS Church Education System. Upon retirement from Ricks College in 1993, he and his wife returned to their home town of Escalante where they are both active in church and community affairs. In 2000 he published a book "Advised Them To Call The Place Escalante", which is a history of the early explorations of Escalante, the settlement, and events from past to the present.

Frederick H. Swanson is the author of Dave Rust: A Life in the Canyons, which has received several awards including the 2007 Utah Book Award for nonfiction. His edited volume of George Fraser’s travels, Journeys in the Canyon Lands 1914-1916, presents the journals of an avid amateur explorer of the Colorado Plateau. Mr. Swanson lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and daughter, who together travel to the Escalante country every chance they get.

Vern G. Swanson, Ph.D., has been the director of the Springville Museum of Art since 1980. He has published fourteen art history books as sole or joint author, on Utah art, Soviet Impressionist Painting and others. He lives in Springville, Utah.

John Telford, a native of Utah, has been making photographs of the landscape and environment for nearly 40 years. His photographs have been published extensively (including over 50 cover photographs) and exhibited both nationally and internationally (more than 70 solo and group shows) and are included in numerous public and private collections. He has authored and co-authored seventeen books, and is currently a professor at Brigham Young University.

While serving as Wallace Stegner Centennial Fellow at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, Steve Trimble has led conversations about Stegner’s work in communities across Utah. Steve’s own work has earned him a broad range of awards, including The National Cowboy Museum’s Western Heritage “Wrangler” Award. As writer, editor, and photographer he has published twenty-two books, including: Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America; Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography and The People: Indians of the American Southwest. Steve makes his home in Salt Lake City and in Torrey.

2009 FEATURED ARTISTS

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Click Here to download a printable version of the 2009 schedule (.pdf)