Locals share passion, talent

Steven Greenwall, Skip Kreibach and his wife, Nancy, all have something in common: they’re all award-winning artists. But to only tell the story of their similarities would be a great injustice. It is their differences, rather than their similarities, that make their story richer. The three, whose lives intersect at the corner of Creativity Avenue and Inspiration Drive, all took very different paths to get there.

FOR NANCY Kreibach, art is more than just a lifelong journey; it’s in her blood. Nearly every woman in her family stretching back generations has created practical works of art to shield their families from the winter cold.
“I’m from a long line of quilters,” she said.
Her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were all quilters. Her sister quilts, too, as did her father’s mother. Nancy is teaching her grandchildren how to sew. However, Nancy saw more practical uses for her craft than just keeping warm. She helps the quilter’s guild in Garnett each year raise money for scholarships. She also enters her quilts in competitions — and wins.
Her latest masterpiece, “Glacier Star,” won first place at the quilt shows in Wichita and the People’s Choice Award in Garnett, and she plans to enter it in the state fair.
While entering contests is fun, Nancy said the process of making quilts is very rewarding and “addicting.”
“I like seeing how things come together,” she said. “You envision it and then you have to work out the problems. It’s fun to see the end result.”
She has her own sewing studio in the basement of her house, where the walls are lined with shelves and cupboards of colorful fabrics and rainbows of thread on spools. She has materials for future quilts separated into different boxes, planned projects that could take years to complete, and she keeps buying more. She can’t drive by a fabrics store without stopping and hunting for hidden treasures.
While Nancy and Skip are different in their art forms, they still turn to each other for criticism and advice on their work.
“I don’t know anything about quilting, but I know something about color balance,” Skip said. “And she doesn’t know anything about painting, but she knows what she likes and doesn’t like.”

SKIP KREIBACH loves still life, which might explain why Kansas is the perfect place for him. He takes long bicycle rides across the state, studying the placement of trees on the tabletops of Kansas fields, finding life in rusted cars and tractors, divining wisdom from the bones of old buildings.
But he does not just find inspiration in what he sees; he creates the forms based on how he would like them to be seen.
“The nice thing about art is I can take one piece and enhance it, change the value and the depth,” he said. “I can take things out and put things in.”
Skip experiments with pencil drawing, graphite, watercolor, acrylic and oil painting. Each one requires a different skill, and he said he should probably focus on just one or two, but can’t bring himself to do that.
“I like them all, and each one seems to have a place,” he said. “Something I can’t do in oil I might be able to do in watercolor.”
Skip is not a born artist. He built his artistic abilities from scratch, and he started late. Skip was already in his late 50s and working on his second career as a computer science teacher at Allen Community College when he decided to take an art class, just on a whim.
“I knew I could draw, somewhat,” Skip said, citing a background in architectural drawing. “I figured I’d do something fun.”
His teacher was Steven Greenwall. Greenwall, according to Skip, is right-brained and creative, so art for him is more intuitive. Skip, on the other hand, is left-brained and more logical in his thought processes. This retired Marine prefers to learn through repetition and step-by-step instruction.
“It wasn’t natural talent,” Skip said. “What I lack in talent, I make up for in tenacity.”
In 2004, his teacher suggested he enter a painting in a contest. Skip was somewhat skeptical, since he had just started, but gave it a try. He won.
A year later Skip retired from teaching and now devotes himself to what might be considered his third career. Over the last 10 years, he has won numerous awards. Most recently, he won first place at the 61st annual Verdigris Valley Art Exhibit in Independence. He’s won top awards at multiple state fairs. Often, he finds himself in the same contests as his old teacher, Greenwall.
“It’s good to have somebody I know compete with me,” Skip said. “It keeps me on my toes.”

STEVEN GREENWALL might be what you call a “born artist.” His ability showed early as a child, and his mother and teachers encouraged it.
In kindergarten, he drew a kingfisher bird on the chalkboard. His teacher never erased it. Greenwall won his first contests in elementary school in Salt Lake City, where he was born and raised. In fourth or fifth grade he won a statewide contest, then second place in a Christmas tree contest run by a television station. He later earned an art scholarship to Brigham Young University.
“The arts are an amazing outlet,” Greenwall said. Art also gives him a spiritual connection to God, he said. “These artistic talents are given to us to nurture, and to share with others.”
This desire made Greenwall a teacher, first to grade school and high school students in Coalville, Utah, then Star Valley, Wyo.
At Jackson Hole, Wyo., he got his first exhibit in an art gallery, but it wasn’t until after he went back to school to earn his master’s degree in drawing, painting and design from Utah State that he began entering more shows.
By the mid-1980s, he decided what he really wanted was to teach at the college level, but people told him this was unlikely because the market was so tight. The job offer at Allen Community College brought him here, and Kansas has been his home ever since.
His favorite place to go is Deer Creek, not far from his house. Many of his paintings and drawings are of that place and he visits it again and again in life and in art.
Today, Greenwall’s resume is dizzying: three one-man shows at the Bowlus, shows at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Hays, Fredonia, Chanute, Parsons, Fort Scott, Garnett, Coffeyville and more. Beyond Kansas, he’s had shows and exhibits in Oregon, California, Idaho, Wyoming, Texas, Ohio and more. He won an international award in Pensacola, Fla., and met an artist there who invited him to Japan. He’s had six exhibits in Japan in the last 20 years, three of which were one-man shows.
“Through that association I’ve brought a Japanese exhibition to the Bowlus,” he said.
In addition to entering exhibits, Greenwall has also been a judge at some of them. This can be awkward, he said, when he has to judge a friend’s work.
“I recognize people’s work,” he said.
Greenwall said he could not be prouder of Skip.
“It means a lot to me that he’s done so well,” he said. “I’m proud to have had him as a student.”
There have even been times where Skip won an award at an exhibition and Greenwall did not.
“They say you’re not a good artist until your student surpasses you,” he said.