Artists

In 1948, Bill Laursen grew up in Salt Lake City and Brigham City, Utah. He graduated from Utah State University in 1972 with a BFA degree in art and art education. While at Utah State, he studied with Harrison Groutage and Everett Thorpe. He served as an art teacher at Cottonwood High School in Salt Lake City from 1972 to 2005. During most of that pe￾riod, he served as chairman of the art department and a set designer and painter. In the classroom, he taught drawing, painting, calligraphy, design, and art history. During the summers, for many years he conducted student fine art tours to New York City. He has been the recipient of many awards as a teacher, including in 1996 a “Golden Apple Award” presented by Utah Governor Michael Leavitt and an Outstanding Service to Education Award from the Utah State Board of Education. Recognition of his painting includes Best of Show, Brigham City Museum Gallery, 1972; Park City Arts Festival Award of Merit, 1974; and Oneta J. Thorne Memorial Art Award- Outstanding Watercolor, 1993, 1994, and 1995

Throughout a long life, Robert Perine continually sought new ways to express his vision and use his creative gifts. Born in Los Angeles in 1922, he identified himself as a practicing artist from the age of six. Following military service during World War II, he graduated from the Chouinard Art Institute. He taught at the University of Alabama during 1950-51, then returned to southern California for a freelance career as a graphic designer. His most notable client was Fender Musi￾cal Instruments, for whom he created the legendary “You won’t part with yours ei￾ther” advertising campaign. Although he attempted to maintain his focus on painting, his business, church, and family responsibilities dominated his attention for nearly two decades. In 1969 he made a career change that allowed him to paint more seriously. Innovating with the medium he loved- watercolor- he departed dramatically and very successfully from its traditional use. During the 1970s and early 1980s, his work appeared in dozens of exhibitions and garnered numerous accolades. Among the institutions that own his work are the Butler Institute of American Art, the University of Massachusetts, Brigham Young University, Neiman Marcus, and the San Diego Museum of Art. Eager to expand his creative reach, Perine expanded from painting to writ￾ing and arts activism, starting with writing and publishing the history of the origi￾nal Chouinard Art Institute in 1985. Over the years, he wrote ten novels, several collections of short stories, three volumes of poetry, seven plays, and three musi￾cals (for which he also composed the music). His last major art piece was an im￾mense work called The Tribes ofXyr, which includes 372 graphite head drawings of imaginary beings grouped into fifteen tribes. For each tribe he created a symbol, an alphabet, and a tribal history. Perine also wrote “Descent into Xyr: The World of Waterling Dilper,” a novella that details his encounters with this mythical world, located in an intricate series of caves in the high desert somewhere in the southwest. In 2003, Perine was the driving force behind the opening of a new Chouinard Art School, where he was the director and taught watercolor, design, and figure drawing. Seeing Chouinard arise from the ashes was the culmination of a decades-long dream for Perine, who treasured the combination of creativity and art fundamentals the original school had provided. Perine was raised as a non-affiliated Christian. His first wife was Mormon, and he joined the Church shortly after they married in 1947. They had three daughters: Jorli, Lisa, and Terri. He became active in the Laguna Beach Califor￾nia Ward during the late fifties and sixties, ultimately serving as bishop. In the af￾termath of his career change in 1969, he and his wife divorced, and he left the Church. However, he continued to consider himself a Mormon- one who was not connected to a ward and did not go to Church but who valued its teachings. While he had many differences with the church, he also loved it deeply. In 1979, Perine married Blaze Newman, an artist and teacher like himself, who nurtured his expanding creativity. He died in November 2004, of a sudden heart attack. He taught until the day before his death.

Janis Mars Wunderlich was born in Akron, (1992) Ohio, and an in MFA 1970, from received the Ohio a BFA from Brigham Young University (1992) and an MFA from the Ohio State University (1994). She has given numerous lectures and workshops through￾out North America. Articles by her have appeared in periodicals, including Ceramics Monthly , which also featured her art in the December 1999 issue. She is featured in the book The Best of New Ceramic Art and the upcoming title 500 Figures in Clay . She has exhibited worldwide and her work is found in permanent and private collection.

Maryann Webster was born in San Francisco and grew up in northern California. She received an MFA and a Research Fellowship award from the University of Utah where she now teaches. Recent exhibitions of her work have been in galleries in New York, Chicago, Berkeley, Santa Fe, and Portland. She works with porcelain and glaze-like enamels that withstand extremely hot temperatures. She likes to imagine these durable materials outlasting our civilization.

Franz Johansen studied art at Brigham Young University under B.F. Larsen, Glen Turner, and Roman Andrus, then at the California School of Arts and Crafts and the Academie de la Grand Chaumière in Paris before joining the faculty at BYU in 1956. There he is currently a professor emeritus. He has done commissioned architectural sculpture for the LDS church, including the facade of the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City. His work, based on religious symbolism, is expressively realistic. Talented in a number of mediums, he works in several. His sculpture, drawing, and oil painting command the most attention.

Michal Onyon graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the University of Utah. Her talents as an illustrator and designer have been applied to positions and commissions for such Utah entities as The Utah Symphony, The Utah Ballet, Red Rock Brewery, The Downtown Alliance, Salt Lake Acting Company, O.C. Tanner Jewelry Store, among others. She lives in Bountiful, Utah with her architect hus￾band Sean Onyon and their two children Hilary and Riley. About ten years ago Ms. Onyon began painting watercolors during spare hours while on trips and family vacations. This collection now in￾cludes a good number of scenes from around the world, of which she says: “When I see these pictures, I can recall the same surrounding sounds, smells, temperature, people, circumstances, light and air as when they were painted. It is a timeless feeling to escape everyday life by trying to capture a world so much bigger and varied than we can imagine.”

Harry Anderson (1906-1996) was born in Chicago to Swedish immigrant parents. He abandoned mathematics to become a very successful artist whose illustrations were popular in national magazines such as Colliers , Good Housekeeping , Ladies Home Journal Redbook Magazine , and The Saturday Evening Post. In 1934 he underwent a religious conversion, became a Chris￾tian, and joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He thereafter divided his time and talent between lucrative commercial work and religious sub￾jects, becoming one of the foremost religious illustrators. His works have been reproduced by the millions in books, magazines, and posters. They in￾clude several commissions from the LDS church.

James Christensen was born in Culver City, California, and studied at the University of California at Los Angeles and at Brigham Young University where he earned an MFA. Since the 1970s, he has been on the faculty at BYU and has developed a national reputation not only for his naturalistic religious painting, but also for poignant and humorous caricatures of life in a world of fairies, hunchbacks, and dwarves. He has worked closely with Greenwich Workshop to produce several highly successful illustrated books.