Backstage with Zealand Bouwhuis & Sage Kennelly
The cameras are off. The band has packed up.
This week, two artists stepped into the spotlight with two very different starting points.
One chose his subject because of where the music led. One was assigned hers — and the more she learned, the more she couldn't imagine it any other way.
Different paths. Same destination.
Zealand Bouwhuis
Painting Bob Dylan
Zealand works in ink.
Not because it's forgiving…
Because it isn't.
There's no erasing an ink line, no covering a mistake with another layer. When you commit to a mark, you live with it. You work around it.
And more often than not, he says, that mistake becomes the thing that makes the piece uniquely itself.
That's the philosophy Zealand brings to everything: high contrast, flow, movement and a willingness to let accidents become part of the story.
He's drawn to patterns and subjects from nature, things with inherent rhythm and structure. Ink feels like the right language for that. Everything counts.
Bob Dylan felt right for that kind of approach.
Dylan's music is roots — the foundation beneath so many modern genres that most listeners don't even realize they're hearing his influence every time they turn on the radio. Folk, country, rock, protest music, confessional songwriting — the threads run back to him in ways that are easy to miss because they've become so thoroughly absorbed into everything else. Zealand was drawn to that depth.
The idea of someone whose fingerprints are everywhere, even when his name isn't mentioned.
Zealand’s been watching documentaries, collecting reference photos, listening through the full catalog — absorbing the character before putting a single line on paper. He wants people to feel Dylan when they look at the portrait. Not just recognize him. Feel him.
Outside of art, Zealand skis, skates and lives for music. He's also working on a larger canvas than he's ever attempted before and for an artist who seeks out risk on purpose, that says something.
Sage Kennelly
Painting Martha Graham
Sage will tell you straight: she was assigned Martha Graham.
But the more she learned about her,
the more it felt like a perfect fit.
Martha Graham didn't wait around to see what would happen. She didn't ask for permission, didn't spend years in the "what if" — she found something she loved, went all in, and spent her entire life reshaping the world of modern dance so completely that its influence is still felt in every studio, every performance, every dancer who came after her. She essentially invented a new physical language. The Graham technique — her specific approach to movement, breath, and contraction — is still taught in conservatories around the world nearly a century later.
One of Graham's most famous quotes: "Movement never lies."
Sage landed on that line and held onto it.
She's been watching documentaries, reading, and talking to dancers she knows — asking them what Graham's legacy actually feels like from the inside of a dance career. She wants the portrait to carry movement. To make people feel something shift when they stand in front of it.
She hopes visitors will pause. Look. And take a second to think about what that quote really means.
Sage is an acrylic, charcoal, and watercolor artist who finds most of her inspiration outdoors — hiking, running, chasing sunrises and sunsets. She's always down to try something new.
And this project, it turns out, was exactly that.
What This is All About
Zealand and Sage are two of 15 local artists creating portraits for:
Influencers Over Time — Part 2: Artists + Entertainers
This five-part exhibition is inspired by TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century — exploring the people whose ideas, creativity, and courage shaped the world we live in today.
📅 May 1–3 📍 West Point, Utah 🎟 Free tickets — reserve your time slot:
