• 2:00 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
  Escalante Interagency Visitor Center

JOEL C. JANETSKI
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Brigham Young University

“Archaeology and the Early Human History of Utah”

Presentation Funded by the Utah Humanities Council Public Square Program

Archaeology and history narrate the past using different, but complementary, data sets: material remains for the former, texts for the latter. Archaeological research in Utah has discovered human presence beginning at least 10,000 years ago, providing tantalizing glimpses into the lives of ancient peoples.

Many questions emerge from such research: Did people hunt mammoths in Utah? When and why did they start farming? Is there evidence for conflict? Answering such questions and understanding how people solved life’s challenges has motivated archaeologists for decades in Utah, an exciting region for exploring the past.

• 3:30 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
  Escalante Interagency Visitor Center

JERRY ROUNDY, Ph. D.
Ph.D. in Western American History, Brigham Young University

“The Incredible Journey: The Hole-in-the-Rock Route to the San Juan 1879-1880”

Presentation Funded by the Utah Humanities Council

In the annals of western pioneering, no wagon road was blazed over more rugged broken terrain than the 200 miles cut by the San Juan Colonizers. One member of the colonizing party described it as “. . .the roughest country you or anybody else ever saw. It’s nothing in the world but rocks and holes, hills and hollows.” (Elizabeth Decker) What was thought would be a six weeks journey, turned into six months of grueling hardships that were enough to try the faith of the hardiest pioneer.

• 7:00 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
  Escalante High School Auditorium

Keynote Prelude: A prelude program will be presented with a variety of music, some instrumental, some vocal, and a little poetry, set to music by Curtis and Diane Oberhansly, Sage Sorenson, and others.

• 7:30 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
  Escalante High School Auditorium

DR. BONNIE J. BURATTI
Senior Research Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

“The Canyon Lands of Utah, Mars, and Titan: Explorers from Everett Ruess to Future Astronauts”

Presentation Funded by NASA

The beauty of the canyon lands has served as an inspiration for artists and poets. The planet Mars and Titan, the giant moon of Saturn (sometimes called an “Earth in deep freeze”), have their own systems of canyons, formed in ways similar to those of Utah. Now we are remotely exploring those areas as scientists, but in the future, astronauts and space tourists on foot will ponder the splendor of the canyon lands of Mars, Titan, and perhaps other bodies in space, just as Everett Ruess was one of the first non- Native persons to appreciate this area of Utah simply for its beauty. The presentation will show photos from recent NASA missions to draw comparisons between landforms in southern Utah and those on other planets and moons. Talk funded by NASA.

• 9:00 PM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
  Escalante High School Environs

Keynote Nocturne: After the keynote, join Bonnie Buratti for an introduction to the night sky.

DR. BONNIE J. BURATTI
Senior Research Scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

“An Introduction to the Night Sky”

Find out which planets and constellations appear in the sky in September, and hear about the legends they tell. If you have binoculars bring them - we will look at clusters of blue and red stars, galaxies, and planets. If we're lucky we will see a shooting star and the glowing dust known as zodiacal light. Geared to adults and children 7 and older.

• 11:00 AM SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2011
  Escalante Interagency Visitor Center Auditorium

PAULA L. MCNEILL, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Art, Valdosta State University

“Inspired by Grandeur: The Art and Life of Western Landscape Painter Valerie Orlemann”

Presentation Funded by Utah Humanities Council

Inspired by artists Edgar Payne, William Wendt, and Maynard Dixon, Valerie Orlemann paints landscapes that express the vastness, color, and drama of the American Southwest. She is a realist landscape painter who paints Western landscapes, but does not try to recreate the Old West. Unlike the great Western painters of the last century, she focuses on landscape rather than figures and believes that the grandeur and emptiness of modern landscapes are inspiring on their own terms.

Orlemann studied art at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Since then she has received numerous awards throughout the Southwest for her paintings: first place at the River Runner’s Art Show in Green River, Utah (2008); plein air painting awards at the Escalante Canyons Art Festival (2006, 2007 and 2008); juried into the 22nd Annual Robert N. and Peggy Sears Dixie Invitational, the St. George Art Festival, Cedar City Arts Committee’s 65th Annual Art Exhibit, the Provo Freedom Festival, and the Outdoor Painters’ Society Plein Air Southwest (2009). Orlemann was also chosen to be Artist in Residence in the San Juan Public Lands Center’s Aspen Guard Station program (2006) and at Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez, Colorado (2008). This presentation, Inspired by Grandeur: the Art and Life of Western Landscape Painter Valerie Orlemann, will focus on the life and art of Orlemann and her development as an artist.

• 2:00 PM SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2011
  Escalante Interagency Visitor Center Auditorium

KEN SANDERS
Ken Sanders Rare Books, Salt Lake City, Utah

“Books and Authors Met On and Off the Trail”

Presentation Funded by Utah Humanities Council

Authors and artists met along the trail over the past 60 years of living in the west. Personal reminisces of Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Charles Bowden, Barry Lopez, Doug Peacock, Utah Phillips, Gary Snyder, Terry Tempest Williams, and others. Reflections on Juanita Brooks, Bernard DeVoto, Charles Kelly, Everett Ruess, May Swenson, Wallace Thurman, and others.

• 3:30 PM SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2011
  Escalante Interagency Visitor Center Auditorium

DR. JAMES R. SWENSEN
Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University

“Photographing a Staircase: A History of Imaging Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument”

Presentation Funded by Utah Humanities Council

Photography has long played an important role in the creation of national parks and monuments in the United States. Although the area around Escalante, Utah has been photographed since the 1870s, this may not be true of the Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument. Photographing a Staircase examines the history of imaging the Monument and the possible role of the photograph in its national designation.

• Presenter Biographies

BONNIE BURATTI

Bonnie J. Buratti received a doctorate in astronomy and space sciences from Cornell University and is currently a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. With expertise on the formation and evolution of the small icy bodies in the outer solar system, she has taken leadership roles on the Cassini Mission to Saturn and the New Horizons Mission to Pluto (the demoted planet). She has served in an advisory capacity on NASA committees and was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for her work on Cassini.

JOEL C. JANETSKI

Joel Janetski is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Brigham Young University where he has specialized in the archaeology of the arid west. His research emphasis has been on hunting and gathering societies as well as small scale farmers. The past several years have been spent in Escalante Valley of southern Utah where he and colleagues excavated numerous Fremont sites. Recently he excavated a deep rock shelter containing evidence of human occupation dating to 10,000 years ago. Current research activities include a re-examination of findings from the Promontory caves on the north shore of the Great Salt Lake and an investigation of basketmaker diets through the analysis of human remains.

Janetski’s research is reported in numerous articles and books including Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology in Utah Valley (with Grant Smith), and Archaeology and Native American History of Fish Lake, Central Utah as well as several volumes reporting excavations of the large Fremont communities in Clear Creek Canyon, and Life on the Edge: Archaeology in Capitol Reef National Park, co-authored with colleagues at BYU.

Janetski has supported public involvement in archaeology during his career and has authored two books on archaeology for public consumption: Indians in Yellowstone National Park and Archaeology of Clear Creek Canyon. In 1986, he founded and continues to be the advisor of the Utah County Chapter of the Utah Statewide Archaeological Society and is the founding editor of UTAH ARCHAEOLOGY, an annual journal supported by professional and avocational archaeologists in the state.

He is a fellow of the Utah Historical Society and the Utah Professional Archaeological Council and recently received the Founder’s Lifetime Achievement award by the Great Basin Anthropological Association.

PAULA MCNEILL

Art educator and photographer Paula L. 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 since 1980. A southerner by birth, McNeill received her B.A. in Art from Arizona State University; her M.A. 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 visual artists in southern Utah through video-taped oral history interviews. She has published some of these findings and has made numerous presentations at state and national professional meetings on this topic, including presentations on the Featured Artist for the Escalante Canyons Art Festival since 2004 when the Festival began. McNeill is currently involved in a similar study, the South Georgia Artists Oral History Project, documenting local artists in southern Georgia where she lives.

JERRY ROUNDY

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 Ph.D. in Western American History from Brigham Young University. 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, a history of the early explorations of Escalante, the settlement, and events from past to the present.

KEN SANDERS

Ken Sanders is the proprietor of Ken Sanders Rare Books and Dream Garden Press in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has been a book dealer, bibliophile, and collector for most of his life. He has had the delight and privilege of having got to known an interesting array of authors and artists over the past decades.

JAMES R. SWENSEN

James R. Swensen completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 2009 in the History of Photography and Art History. He is currently an assistant professor at Brigham Young University and an independent curator. His master’s thesis examined the work of photographer Dorothea Lange in Widtsoe and Escalante during the Great Depression.

Professor Swensen’s current work includes investigations into the photography of the 1970s and 30s. His Essay “Focusing on the Migrant: Dorothea Lange and the John Steinbeck Committee, 1938,” will be published by the University of Kentucky Press later this year and his book on Lange and Ansel Adams’s Three Mormon Towns will be published in 2012.