The Utah Division of Arts & Museums has announced the 15 Utah artists in design, performing, and visual arts that have been awarded $5,000 fellowships to recognize their individual artistic excellence and support their professional careers.
The fellowship provides unrestricted cash awards based on review by prominent arts professionals outside of Utah. This year, Lee-Sean Huang, cofounder and creative director of Foosa, served as the design arts juror; Osnat Netzer, Chicago-based composer, songwriter, pianist and educator was the performing arts juror; and Leilani Lynch, Associate Curator for the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver was this year’s visual arts fellowship juror.
Utah Artist Fellows 2023
Ian Camp, Performing Arts Fellow (Salt Lake City)
Lauren Hunt, Performing Arts Fellow (River Heights)
Miriam Padilla, Performing Arts Fellow (Draper)
Nathan Royal, Performing Arts Fellow (Salt Lake City)
Megan Simper, Performing Arts Fellow (Logan)
Henry Becker, Design Arts Fellow (Salt Lake City)
Creighton Elinski, Design Arts Fellow (Salt Lake City)
Kylie Millward, Design Arts Fellow (Salt Lake City)
Brooke Smart, Design Arts Fellow (South Jordan)
Elpitha Tsoutsounakis, Design Arts Fellow (Salt Lake City)
Ron Linn, Visual Arts Fellow (Orem)
Vaimoana Niumeitolu, Visual Arts Fellow (Sandy)
Horacio Rodriguez, Visual Arts Fellow (Bountiful)
Amber Tutwiler, Visual Arts Fellow (Salt Lake City)
Jaclyn Wright, Visual Arts Fellow (Salt Lake City)
5/2 SOUTHWEST CONTEMPORARY: Bands of Light: Matthew Sketch’s FAM(ily)
Culminating his residency at UMOCA, Matthew Sketch’s FAM(ily) exhibition comprises a series of untitled mixed media pieces that explore the relationship between light and land. Each of the four pieces is built from similar elements but is compositionally unique. At the center of each, and core to the series is the sun, made from gold leaf. From there, thick, teal lines intersect, support, or otherwise interact with each other, which creates the look of abstract landscapes. The Wasatch mountains that create Salt Lake’s iconic skyline are represented here for the way that light interacts with them more than their shape or grandeur.
TAKE A DEEP DIVE: Read 15 Bytes’ article on Matthew Sketch and the Dimebox Gallery from 2018
4/26 SLTRIB: After 15 years, frame and print shop Signed & Numbered still a pillar in Salt Lake City’s art scene
If you went to a concert in Salt Lake City in the late 2000s, you could probably find the show’s promotional poster, designed by artist Leia Bell, and the band’s latest album on vinyl — all in one building.
Located at 221 E. Broadway at the time, Bell’s downtown store and gallery, Signed & Numbered, sat in the basement, with record store Slowtrain just above it. The one-stop spot once well known to music lovers has since been demolished, but Bell and her husband, Phil Sherburne, are still celebrating 15 years of being in business as Signed & Numbered.
TAKE A DEEP DIVE: Read 15 Bytes’ review of Leia Bell’s exhibit at Ken Sanders from 2007
4/26 SOUTHWEST CONTEMPORARY: Environment, Disability, and the Drying of the Great Salt Lake
As Utah faces the evaporation of the Great Salt Lake, Utahns are finding ways to orient themselves in disaster.
For Stephanie Choi, the process is familiar. In her lyric essay, “Spine: Rematerialized,” Choi unravels the reality of living with a back brace after a scoliosis diagnosis at age twelve. “The only time I took it off was to shower, and for swim practice,” Choi writes. “Thus, I only knew my body separate from the brace whenever I was in water.”
Choi’s essay was included in a fall 2022 exhibition at the Salt Lake City Public Library through Art Access Utah titled Embodied Ecologies that evinced the relationship between environment and disability through twenty-four pieces from twelve contributing artists. “Spine: Rematerialized” was printed in a book alongside a swimming lane line and canvases of watercolor spines that attendees could spray with water. This interaction presented an opportunity for people to glimpse the tactile connection Choi feels between her body and bodies of water. Her reflections acknowledge the ways disability takes shape in response to an environment. When she wasn’t swimming, Choi hid her back brace under large t-shirts and baggy clothing. “No classmate ever saw or noticed it / No one sees it, no one notices / How it’s still around me: all plastic, stickered,” she writes.
READ 15 Bytes’ Review of Embodied Ecologies, from Nov. 2022
UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Categories: Mixed Media
