[dropcap]When [/dropcap]the towers—there were more than two—of the World Trade Center fell on 9/11, emergency medical personnel anticipated an avalanche of critical injuries. While the survivors on that day were never counted, responders knew from experience what to expect: eight years before, when a bomb exploded beneath one […]
[dropcap]A [/dropcap]sometimes helpful way to conceptualize Modern Art is “old wine in new bottles.” James Joyce, the essential modernist, took a 2,500-year-old epic poem, the “Odyssey,” and repackaged it as a novel—a literary form only a couple of centuries old—that he called “Ulysses,” after the poem’s protagonist, even […]
There isn’t any rule against making art from a personal, as opposed to universal, point of view. Indeed, it could be argued that most good art started out with something private in it that energized the man or woman who made it. But it’s also true that, for […]
[dropcap]In[/dropcap] biology, circumstances—what scientists call “niches”—summon particular organisms into being. So it may have been inevitable that BYU and Snow College, two of the principal breeding grounds of Utah art, would each possess a teacher who is also a prolific artist, a keen student of local culture, a […]
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 […]
The gallery on the fourth floor of the City Library includes not only a large interior space but also its exterior walls and the mezzanine-like floor space outside. Normally, it rewards two artists sharing the space. The sculptor Cordell Taylor has taken over all of it, as well […]
Once, after we had moved to a new city, I found it helpful to drive my daughter to and from school. In time, her inborn need to be independent led her to public transportation, which she still relies on four decades later, but our pleasure in each other’s […]
“Water Crossing,” 2016, triptych, charcoal on vellum mounted on board, 96″ x 165″ It’s not hard to see why, when BYU Museum of Art’s Curator of American Art Kenneth Hartvigsen and his staff set out to take the measure of artistic responses to the international refugee crisis, they […]
Dana Gluckstein, “Tribal Man in Transition.” Kenya, 1985. Sometimes numbers provide the best grasp of world history, of its sporadic progress and its frequent failures to move ahead. For example, World War II caused an estimated 60 million deaths, which is thought to be the greatest loss of […]
When Madison Donnelly showed her sculpture, “User Centered Design,” at the 2017 Statewide Annual Exhibition, it was outstanding in a field of more conventional works. As a photo that ran in 15 Bytes at the time reveals, even the staff at Rio Gallery seemed to think so: in […]
It sometimes seems as though Lenka Konopasek can do anything. Using only plain paper as her medium, she meticulously models a 21st-century American suburb, spread across a tabletop like an architect’s dream. Stripped of distraction and camouflage and reduced to a bleached-white, monochromatic array, the poverty and redundancy […]
People tend to see something one way until someone shows them another. —Frank McEntire Anyone who knows the art of Frank McEntire, whether sculpture, mixed media, or assemblage, will have witnessed his technique of bringing together found objects, often in the presence of natural materials like stone […]
Sarah Bown Roberts recently graduated from BYU, but she’s starting out strong with Head Lands. Like Noah’s Ark, her 10 mixed-media collages, three oil paintings, and six digital photos each carry paired aesthetic animals. Thematically, the first pair divides them into “archeological excavations” and “restorations.” In this, they recall […]
Artists of Utah recently announced the beginning of Round 2 of Utah’s 15, their project to celebrate Utah’s most influential artists (click here to learn about Round 2 of Utah’s 15.).In 2013, Sandy Brunvand was selected by 200 of her peers as one of “Utah’s 15 most influential […]
Something remarkable, though it shouldn’t have been, took place in the American Southwest in the years following the Second World War. Consider these three names: Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Martin, Beatrice Mandelman. Each of these artists resisted and ultimately rejected the New York mainstream. Each created original and highly […]
In 2013, Sam Wilson was selected by 200 of his peers as one of “Utah’s 15 most influential artists.” The following profile appeared in Utah’s 15: The State’s Most Influential Artists, published by Artists of Utah in 2014. Photo by Zoe and Robert Rodriguez. Sam Wilson says, “It’s all […]
Darn! . . . Shoot! . . . Fudge! . . . . Euphemisms—inoffensive ways of not quite saying what you mean—permeate every language and clog everyday speech. Angry young speakers bristle at having to use compulsory substitutions, which aim to comfort not the speaker but those […]
“Gitana,” Philip Buller, 60″ x 60″ Collecting and displaying damaged artifacts, like broken pottery and scuffed postcards, was almost certainly a matter of necessity before it became a preference, but if the choice is between a flawless replacement and an original that shows a mixed patina of age, […]
