First Wasatch Back Art Festival features equine and birdhouse artists

Johnny and Sherry Adolphson started the Wasatch Back Art Festival. They run a small fine art landscape photography business in the Heber Valley and wanted to create new opportunities for local artists to present their work.

About two dozen artists and creators displayed their work during the Heber Main Street Park event, showcasing everything from woodworking and photography to jewelry, metalwork, fine art and glass-blown creations.

Samuel Burt from Wallsburg was among the artists. He is an art teacher at Timpanogos Middle School and also an equine artist. Burt said he loves markets like this because there are many different art interpretations and styles.

“One of the things I always teach my students, is that people don’t realize how art integrates into our lives. When they see art and art shows, they think about formal paintings like mine,” he said. “One woman said, ‘Well, your artwork is in big gold frames, it belongs in museums. It’s very classical and beautiful.’ And I said, ‘Thank you, but it’s no less valid or interesting than the designs on a bike or the designs on our T-shirts.’”

Burt had his paints set out during the festival and was mixing a muted green for the landscape of his latest piece featuring a group of horses in a field.

William Bush, a young artist, looked on and asked Burt how he created the colors.

“Green gets more gray and a little more blue and a little more muddy as we move further away. Here’s the art teacher, nerd in me,” he said. “There’s some science in it. There’s water in the atmosphere, and the water between us and things further away. It’s like looking through a cloudy glass, and you gradually get more and more layers of that glass in between you and what you’re seeing.”

Burt is working on a Master’s Degree at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. His thesis is on Utah Mustangs and he said he paints horses because he loves their anatomy. It also reminds him of home.

“I also love kind of the nostalgia of Heber and just the farm kid culture you know that we all grow up with and trick or treating your next-door neighbor and, you know, climbing on your grandpa’s tractor for fun,” he said. “And horses have always been a part of that for me.”

Artist Jim Sheeran was also at the festival. He retired from construction work after 40 years and started building birdhouses in his free time just like he did as a kid. All Sheeran’s birdhouses are made of recycled wood from the Kamas Valley.

“When the boys are tearing down a barn or an old shed, they’ll give me a call and I’ll go kick through it, and I can usually walk away with a big armful of old recyclable wood.”

Sheeran said his granddaughter helps him work on the birdhouses. It takes three weeks to build the larger houses and four to five days for the smaller ones as they are detailed. One house was a miniature courthouse with a tiny cat.

Sheeran said art markets like the Wasatch Back Art Festival are vital for artists to get noticed and sell their art.