PARK CITY — It has been a fixture on Park City's Main Street for almost four decades, but the Kimball Art Center has a new home this November. The move was prompted by a growing hunger for the arts that spans all age groups.

After a long day at school, a group of excited children gathers in the basement of the old Kimball Art Center. Even at a young age, they've found a passion for molding pottery, and they're not alone.

"We've had a huge growth in interest in all of the age groups," said Kristen McDermaid, ceramics studio manager at the Kimball Art Center.

Kimball Art Center Executive Director Robin Marrouche summed up the situation this way, "We just keep growing; here we grow again."

In late October, the art center moved from Main Street to a new space in Bonanza Park, a little over a mile away at 1401 Kearns Boulevard. The ceramics studio will follow later this year when its new home is ready for occupancy.

Marrouche said it's all about a community that wants more exposure to art and more opportunities to create it.

"Ultimately, this is about serving the community," Marrouche said. "And the facility that we were in was just, we'd outgrown it."

New possibilities

The new space offers possibilities.

"This space originally was a mortuary, and then for many years, it was a church and now we've renovated it to be an arts center," said Marrouche.

With climate-controlled exhibit space, bright lighting and high ceilings, the Kimball was able to open the new space with an exhibit featuring 90 iconic pieces by famous contemporary artists.

The exhibit, "Picturing the Iconic: Andy Warhol to Kara Walker," might have been difficult or even impossible to stage in the old space.

"There are very strict stipulations for museum work, and this new facility is going to afford us all sorts of new opportunities," said Marrouche.

Erin Linder of Collected Art Services is curating the exhibit and helped to design an arc inside the space to show the development of the iconic pieces from Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans to dramatic images of President Obama and Brad Pitt by artist Chuck Close.

One unusual piece features a paint by numbers of the Last Supper. At the Kimball Art Center, the numbers clearly show attendance at exhibits has quadrupled in the last five years. Kimball Art Director Amy MacDonald said it's easy to explain the surge in interest.

"Art is probably the most nonthreatening, most inclusive medium we have," she said. "There isn't one area that art can't effect in a positive way and in a meaningful way."

It is the meaningful influence on Park City that Bill Kimball envisioned when he established the Kimball Art Center in 1976.

"He understood the healing and inspirational power of art. So, we continue his legacy proudly," said Marrouche.

MacDonald believes Kimball would have applauded the move.

"Bricks and mortar is bricks and mortar and the heart, and spirit, and soul behind it and the intention behind Bill Kimball's interests has been carried over here," said MacDonald.

In Bonanza Park, there's more parking and space for the public to get creative.

"People like a place where they can make things. To be known as a making place is a really positive thing," said MacDonald.

New classrooms to make art in are larger, lighter and there are more of them at the Bonanza Park site. And soon, there will be a bigger ceramics studio with expanded class offerings: "It's a huge team, and we're all kind of working towards the common goal of presenting arts in the community," said McDermaid.

The Kimball Art Center has already reached deeply into the community with arts education programs in all public elementary schools. In two to three years, a brand new center will be built on land that should be selected later this year.

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