“Festival Honors Mormon Arts,” Ensign, July 1982, 76–77
Festival Honors Mormon Arts
The fourteenth annual Mormon Festival of Arts took center stage on the Brigham Young University campus March 4–30, with entries across the spectrum of creative endeavor. Professionals and non-professionals participated in musical performance and composition, theater, visual arts, fiction, and poetry, with contests conducted by many university colleges and departments, under the general sponsorship of the College of Fine Arts and Communications.
Most visual were the paintings, some of which are shown on these pages. Latter-day Saint artists, both students and non-students, submitted some 350 paintings, of which 161 were accepted for display in several galleries of BYU’s Harris Fine Arts Center.
Dr. Lael J. Woodbury, who has recently completed several years as dean of the College of Fine Arts and Communications, was a moving force behind the festival’s inception fourteen years ago—and he sees a bright future for Latter-day Saint art. “I have such great confidence in the festival,” he said. “It’s something that needs to be done and isn’t done anywhere else—to provide a showcase for Latter-day Saints, to give them a sense of community, to let them see themselves as part of a common culture. I think that it’s achieving its goals in doing that; perhaps the greatest evidence of that fact is that we receive progressively greater numbers of entries each year. And it’s progressing nicely toward becoming an international event.”
The festival is open to both professional and non-professional artists. Additional information is available through BYU’s College of Fine Arts and Communications.
“Midway Road,” a watercolor, was painted by Rick Kenateder.
Lynn Millman’s entry: an acrylic, titled “Untitled.”
Wayne Kimball’s lithograph, “Treeinpotatop Ytimne,” won an award for excellence.
Prismacolor/acrylic painting by Kent Goodliffe, titled “The Red Scarf,” was among fourteen winners.
“Gutter Reflections” was painted in oil by Dan Baxter.
Still life in oil, titled “Potatoe Series #2,” painted by Tom Oxborrow.