Wildflower Festival Exhibition
July 5 - July 17
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Join us for this year’s Wildflower Festival Exhibition, featuring new works by Shirley Novak, Nancy Born, Ivy Kim, and 2024’s event poster artist, Katherine Homes!
Katherine Homes
From the age of two-years-old, Katherine has been painting and singing about the natural world around her. Growing up in the lush landscape of Connecticut, she has always had an intimate connection to nature. From a young age, Katherine made a commitment to tread lightly on the Earth, advocate for it, and protect it. Her grandmother attributes Katherine’s love of being barefoot and in the wild to her Native American Cherokee roots.
Katherine has always been drawn to the vivid colors and patterns found in the natural world. She has spent much time traveling internationally, throughout Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, West Kalimantan, Malaysia, Turkey, and Greece. You’ll often see her usage of pattern and color inspired by her travels. Most recently, Katherine has been struck by the beauty of the wildflowers throughout the state of Colorado – earning her the title of this year’s Crested Butte Wildflower Festival Poster Artist!
Shirley Novak
Shirley Novak grew up in Southern California, but now resides in Montrose, CO with husband and fellow painter, Ralph Oberg. As far back in her life as she can remember, Shirley has heard her inner voice calling her to paint. She studied art in California and in 1996 moved to Colorado to study at the Art Students League, and to study with Len Chmiel. While her choices of subject matter are always bright, colorful, and happy, Shirley has dabbled over the years in oils, acrylics, pressed flowers, and watercolor.
“When I am at the easel I try to let the experience happen without forcing anything, and without judgment or negativity. Painting is a huge gift to my life. I love to encourage friends to give it a try. I believe we are all creative at our core. I love helping friends reconnect with their inner child and helping them experience the gift that painting is to me.”
Ivy Kim
The directness, flow, and pauses of the multi-voiced conversation in the landscape inspire Ivy’s drawings and paintings. She uses playful marks, patterns, spontaneity, and abstraction to describe the expressive spirit of nature. This loose and immediate quality of the imagery conveys the energetic feeling of being in the land. Through her work, she shares a joyful sense of nature’s rhythms and patterns. She invites viewers to connect with nature’s depth, poetry, and power that holds and sustains all life.
Nancy Boren
Nancy Boren’s first painting, a watercolor, was done at age 12 while sitting next to her artist father, James Boren, as he painted at the Grand Canyon.
She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Abilene Christian University and cites the influence of notable traditional painters such as Sorolla, Fechin and the Taos Founders while also embracing a bit of a contemporary vibe. Boren’s painting, “Aloft in the Western Sky,” is part of the permanent collection of the Booth Museum of Western Art in Cartersville, GA. She has also exhibited at the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, the Gilcrease Museum, The National Arts Club and the Salmagundi Club, NY.
For the last few years, we’ve found Nancy’s paintings to be a lively, colorful infusion to our wildflower exhibitions.