Hal Cannon is a musician, composer and writer who spent much of his life as a folklorist and radio producer. As the founding Director of the Western Folklife Center and the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, he has published dozens of books and recordings on the folk arts of the West. Since retiring from the Western Folklife Center Hal’s life revolves around music. A lifetime of listening and studying the American West informs his songs. He performs primarily with the 3hattrio singing and playing banjo and guitar. Also, he writes a weekly music and art column, “Loose Cannon Boost.” Hal lives with his wife, writer and artist, Teresa Jordan in a pioneer era pecan orchard in Virgin, Utah
I met Devanie Johnson on location, during the shooting of the feature documentary Tomb of Joseph. That was a year ago — June, 2021 — in historic Nauvoo, Illinois. Devanie was on the crew, taking still photographs. She shot all her photos with an iPhone, mostly using an app called Hipstamatic that transformed the photos to look like tintypes from the mid nineteenth century.
Just when I think I understand Ed Bateman’s images he throws a curve and I have to start all over.
You think it’s an original 19th-century studio portrait framed on a photographer’s carte de visite, a nod to the ancestors. Then you look closer and something is very wrong. You trusted the patina, the formality, the tint, the truth that we all assume photographs convey. But you are deceived: The child version of great grandmother Hedy (or is it great-grandfather Fred?) is posed next to a robot dog. It almost seems a travesty but you can’t stop looking at the image. What can you trust?
Shelby Weaver (U.S., b. 1953) is a Utah outsider artist in a state where outsider has special meaning. He grew up in the small northern Utah town of Hooper. When asked what made him want to make art, he replied, “It was clouds, seeing shapes in clouds, saying, […]
