Artists come from near and far for Kimball Arts Festival

An Atari controller with hands plays itself. A friendly, lean fellow in a bow tie, looking like an extra in the 2005 animated film “Robots,” pours four drinks at once. A 4-foot-tall troll holds a spear in one hand and dangles a key in the other, seemingly asking for a password. 

The father of each of these metal creatures is sculptor Adam Holman from Tucson, Arizona, one of 195 artists who exhibited on Park City Main Street over the weekend during the Kimball Arts Festival. 

Holman has been obsessed with Jim Henson, “Star Wars” and LEGO since he was a kid, if it wasn’t obvious from his passion for birthing weird little monsters using his imagination and hands.

“I kind of think of them as steel cartoons in a way. I’m always thinking, ‘What story do they fit into? What world do they fit into? What might their backstory be?’” he said. “That’s, I think, why they have so much life.”

Holman’s creations incorporate both new metal and found objects from estate sales and junkyards. The troll’s key, for example, comes from an actual castle. Homan’s stepfather, an Army veteran stationed in Germany in the 1960s, brought home lots of strange souvenirs.

“On the weekends, he’d go in the German countryside, and he’d pick through these bombed-out castles from World War II. He came home with, like, 50 keys,” Holman said. “They’re probably stolen and hot merchandise, but perfect for that.”

The strangest object Holman has ever used was a component of a radiology machine that a radiologist client gifted him.

“It looks like something out of a ‘Buck Rogers’ movie,” he said. “We actually had to take a Geiger counter to it, make sure it wasn’t radioactive.”

Holman started his artistic practice as an eighth-grade English teacher, picking up welding from family members. He’s now been an artist full-time for 30 years. 

This was Holman’s second year at Kimball Arts Festival. He first attended about two decades ago and finally freed up his schedule to make the trek to Park City again. The crowd was just as enthusiastic as he remembered. 

Artists in Holman’s circle constantly recommend the Kimball Arts Festival, he said.

“That word of mouth becomes so important, especially from other artists,” he said. “That’s firsthand experience, not ‘I hope it’s a good show.’ It is a good show. They get a good crowd. It’s well organized. It’s a beautiful location. You can’t really lose.”

Artist Cassidy Watt from Santa Fe, New Mexico, said the same. This was his third year at Kimball Arts Festival. 

Watt specializes in “totems” of copper and brass, composed entirely of scrap metal left over from making jewelry. 

Each stripe of the rectangular prism shows a different pattern — one turquoise and marble-like, another black and etched with gold. The catch? Watt produced the various colors and patterns without using a single drop of paint, only chemical reactions. 

“Everything I do is a patina. It’s a reaction,” he said. “But I’m self-taught, so everything you see here is something I’ve invented myself, whether it’s a chemical formula or even the process of how to get the patterns with said chemical formula.”

Watt uses chemicals ranging from those found under the kitchen sink to those you’d only ever find in a science lab. And no, there haven’t been any exploding test tube incidents. In fact, the only time the artist has injured himself was when he sliced his hand with a wire wheel while preparing metal. 

“It’s thousands of pieces of steel wire moving at a couple of thousand RPMs,” he said. “What I learned is (that) you have to be careful. So, when I’m doing a job, it doesn’t matter how long or short, I take it seriously.”

Self-described “mad scientist” Watt wasn’t the only inventive type at the Kimball Arts Festival. Bob McNally from Rockaway, New Jersey, visited for the first time with his original instrument, the Strumstick.

McNally invented the Strumstick in 1984, wanting to design an instrument for “the musically disinclined.”

“I had been building instruments for 14 years, and I also taught guitar for about 12 years. I specifically wanted to make an instrument for beginners that would not make them quit because they were frustrated with how bad they sounded, which is why people quit guitar,” he said. 

The Strumstick has the neck of an acoustic guitar and the fret pattern of a dulcimer. It only has three strings, and the chords are much simpler than a guitar.

“That’s very, very accessible, because it’s hard to do anything that you don’t like,” McNally said.

The instrument’s been picked up by professional musicians, including Tracy Chapman, Amy Grant and Jon Anderson from Yes. Its dulcet tones were a hit with Parkites, too.

While many artists came to the Kimball Arts Festival from across the country, there were also plenty of locals.

Painter Sadie AbuHaidar was raised in Park City and currently lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she works as a wrangler and ski instructor.

AbuHaidar takes equal inspiration from pop art and the Old West. Her works range from javelinas painted on discarded diner placemats to cowboys on horseback, but a self-portrait sticks out among her body of work. It depicts AbuHaidar in melancholy orange and blue hues staring down two trout. 

“I fly fish quite a bit. As a woman, you are pretty alone out there on the river, and it’s a very gatekeepy world out there as well. I mean, you’ll go into a fly fishing store, and the workers in there would rather do anything but tell you where to fish or how to get resources or what flies to use or anything,” she explained. “I made that piece around that lonely feeling. You’re kind of having to stick up for yourself.”

Womanhood is a central theme in AbuHaidar’s work. Her goal is to modernize romanticized Wild West stereotypes by including more gender and racial diversity in the subjects she depicts. 

“A lot of times you don’t see (women) represented, or they’re represented in a pin-up, objectified way,” she said. “A lot of my stuff has that kind of more working, gritty feel to it, no matter who’s in the piece.”

AbuHaidar’s sole passions growing up were horseback riding and painting. In high school, she was a student in the Kimball Arts Center’s Young Artists’ Academy and a volunteer at the Kimball Arts Festival. For AbuHaidar, participating in the festival as an artist for the first time this year was a full-circle moment. 

“It was very cool growing up, being able to go to this festival. It gave me that first thought that I can be a working artist, and this is not some stupid vision for the future that’s not attainable,” she said. “To be able to work my way up … and be able to show my own stuff is really, really special to me.”