One of the most compelling breakthroughs in modern linguistics, and a necessary step on the way to proving that language has become genetically programmed in humans, was the realization that all people everywhere speak essentially the same language. Made up of words and rules for combining them, it […]
Installation view of Freedom Would Be Mine, courtesy Kimball Art Center. Freedom Would Be Mine at the Kimball Art Center celebrates the career of feminist art heroine Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002), whose earliest sociopolitical artwork preceded the 1970s flourish of feminist artists. Because she was an initial […]
For those who want to open life’s envelope rather than pass it on sealed, you will find no better companion than Jana Richman. Her new book of essays, Finding Stillness in a Noisy World, provides soul food for end times. Couldn’t we all use a dose of soul […]
When you think of “Mormon music” what typically comes to mind? A world-renowned chorus of 360 middle-aged balding and white-haired members? Traditional hymns sung at a slightly-slower-than-comfortable pace in chapels punctuated by the cries of children below the “age of accountability”? Or maybe even songs about popcorn growing […]
READ LOCAL First represents Utah’s most comprehensive collection of celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This week we bring you an excerpt from Tim Glenn’s 2017 Original Writing Competition First Place novel manuscript, Forever Desolation. Glenn is a historian and museum director living in Green River, Utah. He […]
Fluid Picassoesque metal figures, Mad Max steampunk vehicles, astronauts basking in the Utah air, and insects the size of your children (Honey, I shrunk the kids!). Take a walk down Broadway to view these identified “Flying Objects”—the works of established and emerging Utah sculpture artists. The ongoing project is […]
Early on in our relationship, Tom Alder had to convince me on an important point: a lack of evidence should not get in the way of a good story. Evidence should be sought, Tom conceded, arguments for plausibility laid out, but ultimately, if nothing disproved a story or […]
We cross paths with dozens or more people in our communities every day but how often do we take the time to sit down with them and share stories? For Holladay artist Jim McGee the chance to get to know his neighbors came when he applied for and […]
Sometime around 1970, feminist historians began to make all sorts of discoveries about the primacy of artistic and scientific discoveries during what has been called the Enlightenment. Among these was the realization that, just as artists often perform the difficult early stages of gentrification of urban areas, only […]
Originally, this piece by Greg Ragland was installed in an empty lot in the Central Ninth neighborhood, where the city had helped local residents organize a community garden. Since then, the neighborhood has gone through a revival, so the lot is no longer empty, nor a garden, and the sculptures […]
Whether it is upheld as an integral part of a religious belief system or simply acknowledged as myth by a more secular audience, what took place in the Garden of Eden continues to inform the way Western civilization has come to understand, represent, and feel about the body. […]
The Underwater American Songbook, Rebecca Pyle’s 2018 digital chapbook, is structured around a captivating and engaging conceit: the collection, as Pyle explains in a foreword, is “a body of almost-lyrics about objects found underwater all around New York.” Each of the 10 poems, therefore, focuses on some sunken […]
Our colleague and friend Tom Alder died on July 3, 2018. Tom was a collector of art and stories. His passion for Utah art drove him to give up a successful career in banking to become a gallerist, and his love of the stories (verifiable or not) behind that art drove him to pursue an art history degree and, for several years, to write a regular column for our pages about the colorful lives of Utah artists - from the painter who slept in a piano to the university professor who faked his car registration decals.
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