Geoff Wichert has degrees in critical writing and creative nonfiction. He writes about art to settle the arguments going on in his head.
“Patterns of Resistance,” the title piece of UMOCA’s latest foray into “forward-thinking art” is a very large, intricate painting in blue and gray. In the midst of imposing space, created by joining two of what were probably the largest sheets of paper the artist could find, it depicts […]
Glass, like painting, sculpture, or any other art medium, flourishes in a variety of techniques. Just as an artist can paint in oil, acrylic, watercolor, with spray paint and stencils, or any number of other innovations, and just as a sculptor can build up clay to be cast […]
On a partition amid the downstairs gallery of the Harrison Museum in Logan hang three hand-woven Hopi plaques, or flat dishes. The backwards-F motif of the central disc repeats six times, as if rotating rapidly around its center. To the left, a woven black-and-white pattern suggests a hoop, […]
A small oil, less than a foot square, says a lot about the man who painted it. Juan Pablo Gasca, who was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, but has made his home in the United States since 1998, calls it “What Do You See?” The title is no joke; […]
The novel and (actually, several) films of The Talented Mr. Ripley are readily available in Salt Lake, but until this week the play has not been. A first step in rectifying that omission was made on Monday night, when Weller Booksworks, as part of both its Free Play Reading Series and the Utah Humanities Book Festival, staged a free reading in the bookstore. Although presented without costumes or scenery and only minimal action, the actors prepared as they would for any staging, rehearsing and working together to develop characters and impart the right voices.
…Aside from the extensive, rhythmic variation in the circles and straight bands, set against the regular pattern that controls them, the rigidity of the overall scheme is broken by several major variations. While contemplating it, eye and mind are drawn into ceaseless motion over scintillating regions that refuse […]
Of all the brilliant theatrical tropes that Repertory Dance Theatre has introduced over half a century, one of the best comes right at the start of each performance. As the house lights dim and the roses on the curtain fade from sight, anticipation calls the audience to order. […]
When 15 Bytes first encountered Casey Jex Smith almost a decade ago, he seemed exactly the sort of artist the world craves and Utah schools, almost alone in academe, excel in producing. At the premier U.S. art schools, from Yale to the RISD (the proximity of Yale to […]
It would be helpful if words could capture the sequence of impressions created by a first encounter with Confetti and Distress, Honey and Suspicion. We know what to expect with paintings and sculpture, and increasingly now with performance, installation, video—all the newer media that have become familiar […]
In a vintage wisecrack, Ad Reinhardt once defined a sculpture as “something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.” Gallery owner Thomas J. Howa knows the sentiment, but disagrees. Himself a painter, Howa doesn’t see how showcasing two artists in the same medium […]
Amalia Ulman’s anti-war installation is an ambitious, multimedia work in which the artist clearly has invested much of herself. In a dark room, three independent elements—wire sculptures that can be felt and navigated around as well as seen; recorded music from an unseen source; and in an […]
The current controversy over art’s funding, precipitated by the apparently politically-motivated firing of Utah Division of Arts and Museums director Lynnette Hiskey, exposes two fundamentally different ideals of how art should operate in modern society. To be fair, it’s not that the Tea Party-types don’t like art; […]
