Art Gallery

Regional artists Rick Houchin and David Lovekin offer bright and evocative imagery in a new exhibit on view at Hotel Garber.

They left during the middle of the night—often knowing only that moss grows on the north side of trees. An estimated 100,000 enslaved people chose to embark on a journey in search of freedom between 1830 and the end of the Civil War in 1865. They moved in constant fear of being killed or recaptured, returned, and beaten as an example of what would happen to others who might choose to run. Under the cover of darkness, “fugitives” traveled roughly twenty miles each night, traversing rugged terrain while enduring all the hardships that Mother Nature could bring to bear.

Scott Kirby's drawings and watercolor paintings are inspired by the American Great Plains. Referred to as an “accidental artist” by Sandpoint Magazine, Kirby began making art at the age of forty. Although the attempts to capture these mostly imagined visions are quite intentional, the origins of Kirby's transition from music to art was, in a way, “accidental,” or unexpected, and his scenes are rooted in a long relationship with the towns and landscapes of the American grasslands.