04/25/2023
According to Vern Swanson, PhD, one of the authors of the DICTIONARY OF UTAH FINE ARTISTS:
"The Helper Artist's Movement...(is) the most significant art movement in Utah in the twenty-first century".
Helper represents one of “the most remarkable projects of urban revitalization in the country and I think it is a model that other cities in Utah and other cities around the country can follow” according to Scott Anderson, President, and CEO of Zions Bank.
HISTORIC HELPER ARTISTS REPRESENTED IN THE DICTIONARY OF UTAH FINE ARTISTS:
1. Steven Lee Adams (page 3). In addition to his ADAMS FINE ARTS gallery ( 115 S Main St, Helper, Utah, i.e. the J.C Penny Store), Steven’s art is represented in several important galleries including Illume Gallery of Fine Art in Salt Lake City, Kneeland Gallery, Ketchum, Idaho, Mary Williams fine Art, Boulder, Colorado and Mockingbird Gallery, Bend, Oregon;
2. Wendy Susan White Chidester (page 77). Wendy has galleries in Salt Lake City and also Helper, Utah. Her “contemporary realist still-life paintings are represented at Coda Gallery, Park City, Utah and Palm Desert, California, 15th Street Gallery, Salt Lake City, Utah and Mockingbird Gallery, Bend, Oregon;
3. Paul Howard Davis (page 105). Paul taught painting at the University of Utah for 25 years and served a professor and department chair. UMFA recognized him as one of Utah’s 15 most influential artists;
4. David Dornan (page 114). David is a painter of “exquisitely composed trompe l’oeil still-lifes, sculptor and a revered faculty member at the University of Utah art department for 17 years. Helper emerged as “the center of an important art movement”, due to David’s and Paul Davies’ students working and living there;
5. David Richey Johnsen (page 196). David’s paintings are included in prestigious collections of Jackie Collins, Arnold Kolpolson, John Berry, Universal Studios, Turner Network, Sundance Institute and CBS Records. His paintings can be found at his gallery on Main Street in Historic Helper;
6. Anne Mette Kaferle (page 203). “This perceptive artist…paints landscapes …focusing on the humbling vastness of or plant”. She has had exhibitions at the Nuart Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Anne Jespersen Fine Arts, Helper, and Trove Gallery, Park City, Utah;
7. Kate Kilpatrick-Miller (page 207). Kate worked with Paul Davis, and Dave Dornan. Kate is well known for her paintings of photo-realistic cars accompanied by paintings of historical events. Her art can be seen at her gallery on Helper’s historic Main Street;
8. Marilou Kundnueller (page 214). Studied painting at John Hopkins University and moved to Helper in 1995 to the Helper Art Workshops in 1995. Her work was exhibited in Nest: Women Artists of Helper at Anne Jespersen Fine Arts;
9. Anne Morgan-Jespersen (page 254). Anne is both an architect and artist. Her paintings focus on portraits in oil. Anne opened a beautiful gallery in Helper, Anne Jespersen Fine Art and is an integral part of the Helper Artists Movement. Vern Swanson considers this movement to be “the most significant art movement in Utah in the Twenty-first century”. Anne’s gallery is located at 167 South Main Street, Helper, Utah;
10. Kathleen M. Royster (page 313). Kathleen is “an exceptional ceramist and ceramic sculptor” and taught at the University of Utah and Scripps College in California. Major museums including the LA County Museum of Art and the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Her work can be found at her workshop and gallery at 187 South Main Street, Helper, Utah;
11. Ben Steele (page 344). Ben is “a realist artist of still life…which is often satirical and even whimsical as demonstrated in his numerous paintings of Pez dispensers, spray paint, crayon boxes” etc. One of Ben’s paintings graces the cover of THE DICTIONARY OF UTAH FINE ARTISTS and is represented by numerous galleries from Palm Desert to Boston. His unique and interesting studio displaying his art in murals is the north gateway to Historic Main Street. Ben and his wife Melanie own and operate a gallery and gift shop, Beg, Borrow and Steele, at 127 South Main Street;
12. Melanie Price Steele (page 345) exhibited in Nest: Women Artists of Helper. Her “relief paintings of raised gessoed canvases are glazed in oil and acrylic”. Her work can be seen at Beg, Borrow and Steele, at 127 South Main Street;
13. Karen Jobe Templeton (page 362). Karen is an award-winning sculptor, best known for Heroes Among Us, her work memorializing the miners who died in Utah’s Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster. Her work can be see at her K2 Gallery located at 102 South Main Street, Helper, Utah;
14. Thomas Elmo Williams (page 394). Thomas was an underground coal miner at the Hiawatha Mine, Utah from West Virginia. His paintings focused on “realism industrial scenes of ” his fellow coal miners. Thomas opened the Box Car Gallery with David Richie Johnson where he also worked until his passing in 2022. His paintings can be seen at many public buildings around Utah including at Castleview Hospital in Price, Utah.
