The artists of Helper, Utah, have spent the last three decades honing strategies to strengthen their rural community—and make the regional market work for them.
This article is part of our The Hyperlocal series, a continuation of the ideas explored in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 11.
“It’s Happening in Helper.” That was the slogan long plastered on a billboard along southeastern Utah’s Highway 6, beckoning people to stop in Helper. The picturesque town of 2,000 is settled at the foot of the soaring Bookcliff Range, a mountain stratified with coal seams. Helper got its name from the “helper” engines that pushed enormous coal trains up the river canyon to Salt Lake City and beyond.
Coal is no longer pulled from the mines outside of town. Instead, what’s happening in Helper is under-the-radar art production. Up and down Main Street, painters, a ceramicist, and craft artists are steadily doing their thing. While the industrial and art industries might seem at odds, in Helper they have a lot in common: artists who want to build their careers must exhibit grit and ingenuity to make a living, hauling their work to markets up the canyon and beyond.
Much of the summer traffic on its way to Moab streams right past Helper. When drivers pull off Highway 6, they spend just an hour or so leg-stretching here before heading south. Helper is just not big enough to be a destination; it offers a local history museum, a few restaurants, and a picturesque Wild West-era main street. Tourists take a peek at the art in the galleries, but most spend their money on food before getting back on the highway.
Those who sell a lot of artwork in town say they keep it in “a passersby price range” well under four figures. Tim Morse , who shows his oil and watercolor paintings at Boxcar Gallery with David Richie Johnsen, says little paintings sell best. “It’s easy for them to take a small thing home,” he says, “They can put it in a suitcase.”
We want to be the renegades, not the developers.
Kathleen Royster makes handmade porcelain dinnerware in her Helper gallery and studio space, selling a small portion locally. Her main sales focus is the seasonal Park Silly Market in Park City, Utah, whose seasonal attendance is around 200,000.
The majority of the artwork produced in Helper is sold beyond city limits, at galleries and events in Santa Fe, Jackson, and Palm Desert.
To the resident artists, Helper’s quiet vibe is just fine. “We want to be the renegades, not the developers,” says Melanie Steele, wife and business partner to painter Ben Steele. He’s in a community of journeymen artists who like living rurally. “It’s take-your-lunchpail-and-go-to-work art,” she says.
The Steeles moved to Helper in the mid-1990’s when many buildings on Main Street were vacant and falling into disrepair. Ben received studio space and regular critiques from David Dornan, a former University of Utah professor. With a group of local artists, Dornan purchased an abandoned building taken on back taxes, which became the headquarters of the Helper Art Workshops.
There he taught workshops with Marilou Kundmueller and Paul Davis. They encouraged young painters to move to Helper, believing that living in a quiet, inexpensive place would help serious students become full-time painters. And it did—so often that artists’ connections to Helper are listed in the profiles of the Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists.
Also in the ‘90s, David Richey Johnsen and Thomas Elmo Williams created the Helper Arts Festival. They made a kind of pact with Dornan and his circle. Johnsen took on community involvement while Dornan provided university-level arts courses.
The Helper Arts Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary last year. A second generation of community involvement has come with Helper Saturday Vibes, a sister event to Park Silly Market. Anne Jesperson founded the Helper Project, a nonprofit organization that finds grant money for city renovations and offers college and vocational scholarships to local students.
Although art saved the town in terms of renovating buildings, it doesn’t contribute much to Helper’s economy.
“I don’t think the art scene is going to carry the community financially, because [artists] pay sales tax where they sell their work,” says Jesperson. The Helper Project has brought in a half million dollars in eight years, all from outside donors.
Helper is a ‘what’s your side hustle’ kind of town.
Steven Lee Adams, who shows his impressionist landscapes at his namesake gallery in the old JC Penney building on Main Street, adds, “Helper is a ‘what’s your side hustle’ kind of town.”
The rural Southwest is still struggling to shore up its economy in this post-industrial era, but in Helper, art’s real contribution is community building. Royster has served as executive director of the Helper Project and says the years artists have spent cultivating art appreciation among the locals have paid off. “It’s not a one-way thing where we’re here to live cheaply and make money outside,” she says. “Art enriches the community, and people see it.”
The Beg Borrow and Steele Gallery is open on Main Street for the benefit of the town. Steele’s images are printed on stickers, postcards, and T-shirts, sold in what could be called the “pocket-money price range.” Steele says, “We don’t want art to be something that’s elitist.”
The Helper arts scene has also boosted artists from its rural surroundings. Notable among them are Thomas Elmo Williams (1956-2022), a coal miner with murals and paintings in several public art collections; and Scott Yelonek, who participated as a self-taught watercolorist in an early Helper Arts Festival. He now shows oil paintings in Scottsdale and Jackson in addition to kt Gallery in Helper.
Locals feel proud that artists have contributed to the restoration of Main Street, and Jesperson notes that art, together with the local dedication to maintaining the town’s history, contributes to the remarkable spirit of Helper. However, the privilege of living in Helper comes with a cost, just as it did for generations of miners and railroaders. “I cannot have this conversation without people knowing it’s a hardscrabble life here,” Jesperson says.
