Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey began her journey in Los Angeles in 1932, where and when she recalls feeling she was an American. She would soon learn, however, that her Japanese family background marked her in ways she did not understand, and she still refuses to accept. Forced at […]
So many of Utah’s storied art venues have lost their homes, or are in danger of losingthem, that you could be excused for thinking we must have too many of them. Why are they among the first places developers think of when looking for somewhere to build? The […]
A statewide exhibition brings an opportunity to show work to an audience that may not be reachable otherwise, but the work should accurately represent the artist’s materials, style, and subject matter, not create expectations that additional explorations of the artist’s body of work will not fulfill. Or should […]
A visitor to Phillips Gallery during what are becoming their annual showings of the art of Melinda and Joseph Ostraff (see last year’s here) might initially have the impression that the artists work in two formats. One, the more common by far this year, is about the size […]
The main gallery at Phillips is large enough to allow viewing a painting from a moderate distance, a point of view where one current work presents as a charming landscape, featuring a cottage beneath two large trees that resemble tulips. On a clothesline from one of the trees […]
The title piece of Elmer Presslee’s first Salt Lake exhibition since 2017, “The Flannel Void” may be the least disturbing work for many visitors to this chamber of playful horrors in the Underground Gallery at Bountiful Davis Art Center. While his fans will accept it as part of […]
In 1986, I toured a pair of museums on Trafalgar Square in London: the National Gallery, possibly the finest collection in an international field marked by many superb contenders, and the National Portrait Gallery, where I encountered a modern portrait that came to haunt me over the years. […]
Shiya Zeng exhibits unfamiliar magic around the perimeter of what I like to call the Sunset Gallery, at Finch Lane. Then, to show just how magical it is, she contrasts it with a relatively mundane counterpoint that appears to restore her audience to Salt Lake City, though to […]
At the Springville Art Museum’s 2023 Spiritual and Religious Art of Utah exhibition, among the hundreds of excellent works that found their way into what must be one of the largest exhibitions of recent art anywhere, one piece that stood out was by an artist unknown to me. […]
If the only John Wood painting in the gallery was “Shared Experience,” a casual viewer could be excused for thinking him a landscape painter in the Impressionist School. This panel, which is almost twice as wide as it is tall, seems to show a body of water, a […]
The five sculptures and one video that constitute Parable Bodies, the exhibition by Moses Williams now in the AIR Space at UMOCA, simulate living things using materials that are not alive, such as earth and light. That could be said of most art, of course: but it’s not […]
The film is set in the quintessential American space: the interior of an automobile. Marlene Kos is seen sitting on the passenger side of the front seat (the “suicide” seat), while the camera views her from behind. This brings to mind “Jo in Wyoming,” a painting by Edward […]
The view is straight down, so that the desert hillocks and washes look like an abstract painting, all contours and curves on a completely flat canvas. Then the view rotates, the viewer seeming to circle down, around the focal point, moving from above the spot to looking at […]
On first sight, the painting rings like a chime that echoes through the memory of art. The presence nearby of two more works from the same time and place confirms that the painter surely knew of and appreciated the great Mexican muralists, including Diego Rivera (once Mexico’s foremost […]
“Apologia” is a technical term that, while related to “apology,” actually means “explanation.” The connection is historical, since an explanation functions like an apology, in clarifying why something is different from what’s expected. On her website, Rebecca Klundt offers an elaborate “apologia” for her work, which she puckishly […]
Given so many bad stories and ill-will in our national conversation these days, it’s easy to overlook those artists who still want to share their by-no-means-universal appreciation, and even gratitude, for the positive works they witness and the good lives they enjoy, but do not presume to feel […]
A stroll to FICE Gallery and Boutique offers the observant visitor a live experience of historical Utah, albeit not so much the “Wild West” of fantasy as the gritty, urban jungle of black-and-white Noir films from the 1930s. This downtown neighborhood is a rare survivor of a lost […]
