Wallowa Valley Plein Air Festival
September 13-21, 2025
Wallowa Valley Arts Festival Transitions into New Plein Air Celebration
Joseph, OR — For more than four decades, the Wallowa Valley Arts Council has proudly hosted the Wallowa Valley Arts Festival—one of Eastern Oregon’s most cherished annual arts events. The Josephy Center (JCAC) merged with the Arts Council in 2018 and adopted the Arts Festival. While 2025 would have marked the festival’s 43rd year, JCAC is entering an exciting period of transformation. With major construction set to begin on our facility this September, available space will be significantly limited.
In response, JCAC is embracing this moment of transition with creativity and vision. Rather than pause the tradition, we’re reimagining it.
This year, we are thrilled to introduce a special event: the Plein Air Festival, running September 13–21, 2025.
This new, more intimate celebration of landscape painting will highlight the beauty of our region while honoring the legacy of the Wallowa Valley Arts Festival. Artists are invited to showcase both studio work and freshly created plein air pieces in a week-long outdoor painting competition. The festival opens on Saturday, September 13, with five days of plein air painting across Wallowa County.
Completed works will be displayed in JCAC’s Main Gallery alongside selected studio pieces. On Friday, September 19, a “Quick Hang” will precede an exhibit opening reception at 7pm, marking the public debut of the plein air artworks.
We are honored to welcome acclaimed painter Steven Hill (windsweptstudios.com) as this year’s juror.
The celebration continues on Saturday, September 20, with free gallery admission and a lively Quick Draw event across the street, featuring live music and a welcoming community atmosphere. Artists are also invited to contribute to a Silent Auction, running from Friday evening through Sunday, September 21, at 1:30pm—a great way for collectors to support the arts and for the Josephy Center to raise funds for future programming.
Schedule of Events
Music Schedule
Festival Judge: Steven Hill
I have been an artist since the day I picked-up my first pencils and crayons, making marks on most surfaces. I won my first big award in the 4th grade with “First Place” in a city-wide art contest sponsored by the Red Cross in my hometown of Boise, Idaho. It was a drawing made from memory of the masked surgeons who had removed my tonsils years earlier – an experience which obviously made a lasting impression.
Making art was the beacon that allowed me to survive high school, college and the U.S. Army, where I became an illustrator, after the Vietnam era draft had sealed my immediate future. In 1972, I returned to university and earned an MFA in painting from Washington State University, studying with notable artists like Robert Helm, Gaylen Hansen and Robert Sterling, before moving to Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, to help set up a private art school.
The art school was before its time, but I sure took to island life, teaching art at Lopez High School, before starting my own successful graphic design business. Selling the businesses in the late 90’s to paint full-time has proven to be totally rewarding. I have won many art awards and some prestigious honors over the past decade. My passion is to find special places, both home and abroad, and explore those with every element of my psyche dialed into the joyous, expressive and interpretive language of painting on-site.
My work has now won 65 top awards in major juried fine art competitions worldwide since 2003. It resides in 3 art museums, many private and corporate collections and has been published in several notable art magazines and books. I have exhibited in Florence, Italy, NYC and was nominated and voted into the prestigious Salmagundi Club in NYC, 2018. Perhaps the biggest honor was winning the annual purchase award from the Superintendent of Zion National Park in 2015, putting my painting in the park’s permanent collection alongside Thomas Moran and other notable artists from over the past 100 years.
