2020 Alfred Lambourne Arts Program:
Click here to view the program as a website.
Click here to download the program as a .pdf
Additional Links:
Rachel Barker's Sand Body Sky, dance
Great Salt Lake Photography: Water Rising, drone photography by Charles Uibel and synthesized music by Mark Boer
Christopher Mansfield's Duality, original composition for cello
Rhyolite Butte, drone photography by Charles Uibel and ambient music by Mark Boer
Dan Weist's Isle of Peace, video essay
Ashley Wilson Wall's Great Waves, video
FRIENDS celebrates the relationship between local artists and one of Utah’s most precious natural resources, Great Salt Lake. Through artistic expressions, we enhance our capacity to build awareness about the Lake and our need to preserve and protect it for the future.
In 2014, FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake established The Alfred Lambourne Prize, an annual recognition and celebration of regional creativity inspired by our inland sea. FRIENDS invited creative work inspired by the Lake in the forms of visual arts, literary arts, sound and movement. Submissions for the 2021 Prize will be open March 1 – May 15.
The prize takes its name from the renowned painter and writer Alfred Lambourne (1850-1926). Born in England, he moved with his family to the United States and settled in Salt Lake City in 1866. Lambourne’s artistic talents were put to use painting scenery for the Salt Lake Theater. He developed an early and passionate interest in Great Salt Lake, inspired in part by reading Captain Howard Stansbury’s account of the 1850 survey of the lake (Exploration and survey of the valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah, 1852). Lambourne traveled the lake by sailboat and lived for a time on Gunnison Island in the hopes of obtaining land there through homesteading.
Lambourne is remembered for the dozens of sketches and paintings he created of Great Salt Lake as he captured facets of water, light, and land in the romantic style reminiscent of the Hudson River School painters. His writing, based upon his time on Gunnison Island, stands out as the earliest, most evocative prose penned on the Lake’s physical attributes and psychological impressions. Lambourne melded fact and fiction as he wrote first in serial fashion about the lake for The Deseret News then published these writings as Pictures of an Inland Sea (1894; 1902) and Our Inland Sea: The Story of a Homestead (1909).
Visually inspired and poetic in nature, Lambourne bestowed upon us the Lake through lyrical prose:
"There is another phenomenon to be seen at infrequent periods on the Inland Sea, one that is unpaintable, and also, I believe, entirely local. It is to be witnessed during the calm summer twilights, when the pale, fairy-like tints on the water are breathed upon by opposite currents of languid wind. As they interplay in bands, in points, in shifting isles of amber, azure and rose, the whole surface shimmers and glistens like a silken robe studded with countless pearls."
The significance of Great Salt Lake to Lambourne as he engaged in his subject across several modes of artistic expression was key in FRIENDS’ decision to name the annual arts and humanities prize after him.
Artist and writer, Holly Simonsen, directs the Alfred Lambourne Prize Program for FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake. She is responsible for administering the prize, establishing the judges, and cataloging the submissions.
Feel free to contact her at snowyegret@fogsl.org
Holly Simonsen
Holly works in ecopoetic collaboration with Great Salt Lake, where her creations explore the relationship between language and ecologically disrupted environments. Although primarily a poet, her work often migrates off the page into 3D spaces. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She was a recent fellow at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT and at the Djerassi Resident Artists’ Program in Woodside, CA. She currently works as an adjunct professor of English and literature at Westminster College and as the Membership & Programs Director for FRIENDS of Great Salt Lake. Links to her published work can be found at
2019 6th Annual Alfred Lambourne Prize
Visual Arts Winner: Christine Baczek and David Hyams for Whale of a Tale
Literary Arts Winner: Ellen Weist for Eight Views of the Lake
Movement Winner: Mikenzie Hendricks for PLACED PIECES ensared | calcified | discovered | displayed
Sound Winner: Kate McLeod for The Great Salt Lake Visited
2019 Alfred Lamboure Arts Program is sponsored in part by a Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, & Parks Grant. ZAP is You!
2018 5th Annual Alfred Lambourne Prize
Click here to view photographs from the event. All photographs by Charles Uibel.
Visual Arts Winner: Kathleen Carricaburu for Allegory of the Desert. View more of Carricaburu's work by clicking here.
Literary Arts Winner: Amy Brunvand for A Crown of Sonnets for Great Salt Lake
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Movement Winner: Beth Krensky for Metaphysical Handcart. View more of Krensky's work by clicking here.
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Sound Winner: Charles Uibel and Mark Boer for Pictures From A Life. View the entire submission by clicking here.
2018 Alfred Lamboure Arts Program is sponsored in part by a Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, & Parks Grant. ZAP is You!
2017 4th Annual Alfred Lambourne Prize
Visual Arts Winner: Michael Sharp for History/Prehistory
Literary Arts Winner: Alicia Anderson for lacustrine
Movement Winner: Kendall Fischer for Breathing Sky
Sound WInner: Stuart Wheeler for Red Lake
2016 3rd Annual Alfred Lambourne Prize
Click here to view photos from the event.
Visual Arts Winner: Virginia Cattherall
Literary Arts Winner, Maurine Haltiner
Sound Winner, Jules Jimreivat & Syd Sattler
Movement Winner, Sarah Whiting & Wasatch Jr. High
Sponsors: Yae Bryner, Allen & Julie Dodworth, Bruce Fowler, The Nature Conservancy in Utah, The Phillips Gallery, Ali Sabbah, The Sorenson Unity Center, The Taproot Foundation
2015 2nd Annual Alfred Lambourne Prize
Winner : Max Rosenzweig, Visual Artist for his piece entitled Ephemeral Nonsites of the Great Salt Lake and Lake Bonneville
Sponsors : Bruce Fowler, John Milliken, Yae Bryner
2014 1st Annual Alfred Lambourne Prize
Winner : Marden Pond, Sound Artist, for his musical composition entitled "Sanctuary."
Sponsors : Bruce Fowler, Alderwood Fine Art, Will Bagley, Ben Behunin Pottery, Community Foundation of Utah, Meri DeCaria, Steve "Doc" Floor, David Glover, D. Goodell, InterNet Properties Inc, Richard Johnson, Wayne Martinson & Deb Sawyer, Capitol Hill Construction, Irving C. Smith, Springville Art Museum, XMission
