In January of 2010, artist Daniel Pettegrew began a monumental body of artwork. He was commissioned to carve twenty-five huge wooden doors for the Erin Kimball Memorial Foundation, which provides assistance to women who are victims of domestic violence. On Friday, November 5, an exhibition of the first completed body of doors titled Doors of Hope will open at the St. George Art Academy which is located at 73 North Main Street in St. George. The show will run through December 17th and will be open Tuesday thru Thursday from 12-6pm, and Friday and Saturday from 10am-2pm.
Drawing on imagery he believes will foster feelings of hope and healing for viewers, and eventually the women whose homes the doors will grace, Pettegrew’s doors depict women, children, flowers, rivers, and trees in cheerful colors. Formerly a successful commercial artist and the creator of Xetava Gardens in Kayenta, Pettegrew has since concentrated on creative projects focused on messages of love and appreciation of nature. He believes Doors of Hope is absolutely one of those projects.
The doors will eventually be used in the Erin Kimball Memorial Foundation’s flagship project Adalante, or “Onward and Upward” in Spanish. Adalante will be a small community of residences where women taken in by the organization will learn to overcome the environment they have fled and in fact move onward and upward. The Foundation’s namesake, Erin Kimball, was tragically killed along with her two children by domestic violence. Her step-mother, Sue Kimball, created the Foundation with the hope that providing battered women with healing and empowerment in the form of assisted housing would enable them to leave situations of abuse for good.