Art and Soulof the Magic Valley will showcase over 200 works of art at 74 locations around Twin Falls, Jerome, Kimberly and Eden. The contest kicks off on Friday, June 7 and voting will take place through June 29.
- Art and Soul is the largest public voting art contest west of the Mississippi.
- 216 artists have entered the general competition, and 100 youth have entered the youth contest.
- Over $40,000 in prizes will be awarded across a huge range of categories: acrylic, ceramic, digital, drawing, fiber, glass, mural, mixed media, original art quilt, oil, pastel, printmaking, photography, sculpture over 3 feet, sculpture 3 feet and under, wearables, water media, and woodwork.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
"This was the grand hotel west of the Mississippi River for many, many years after it was built,” Kelly Klaas told me as we stood in his garage. He was showing me the details of a scale model he built of the Perrine Hotel. “There was a lot of dignitaries and celebrities stayed at this hotel"
Completed in 1905, the Perrine Hotel, was crucial in the early development of Twin Falls
It was torn down in 1968 when Klaas was just 16. As a woodworker, Klaas was looking for a challenge to enter into the Art and Soul competition.
“I wanted something that would kind of be a wow factor for art and soul,” Klaas said. “I just kind of got had it in the back of my head for quite some time to build a scale model of the Perrine Hotel.”
He made ten thousand bricks from oak scrap he had on hand, and made his design using historical photos.
It took him six months
"That's all I had to go by, because I tried to find floorplans and nobody knew anything about anything on this,” Klaas said. “So I had all the pictures so I thought well, I'll just start there so I counted the bricks how many were on the face and duplicated that.”
Kelly's work is just one of over 200 entries that will be on display at 74 different locations for the 14th annual Art and Soul of the Magic Valley
“They say Art and Soul is an art contest, but truly it is an arts appreciation endeavor, and relationship community building event,” Magic Valley Arts Council director Melissa Crane told Idaho News 6.
“We invite artists from all over the world to participate, but it takes our community to host the artist to sponsor the artist to put this together,” Crane said.
"I thought ‘oh man there's no way I'm going to be able to do this,’ but I just started putting it together, piece by piece, and pretty soon I was halfway done,” Kelly said.
