Author Archives

Scotti Hill

Scotti Hill is a lawyer, art critic, and curator based in Salt Lake City. She has contributed to various publications and serves as an adjunct professor of art history at Westminster College. She has a Master's Degree in art history from the University of Utah.

Artist Profiles | Visual Arts

Ya La’ford, Ogden Contemporary Arts’ Inaugural Artist-in-Residence, Traverses Utah’s Artistic Landscape 

Ya La’ford’s artistic practices are as multifaceted as her lived experience, spawning abstract painting, public art, video, sculpture and installation. The child of Jamaican immigrants, La’ford exudes the sort of palpable energy derived from a life of incredible ambition and achievement.  While her methods are varied, her work […]

Art Professional Spotlight | Visual Arts

Reflections of an Art World: A Conversation with Nancy Rivera

Born in Mexico City, Nancy Rivera is a Salt Lake City-based artist, curator, and arts administrator. An interdisciplinary artist, she utilizes photography, video, sculpture, and installation to explore themes of dual cultural identity and its effects, such as code-switching, cultural assimilation, and displacement. Her work has been selected […]

Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

Sanabria and Barney Provide Doses of Whimsy and Discomfort at Rio Gallery

Rio Gallery’s current exhibition pairs the work of Dalila Sanabria and Fiona Matisse Barney, artists who through their sculptural, video and photographic practices investigate the amorphous notion of “comfort” in everyday life. A current BFA student at Brigham Young University, Barney experiments with whimsy and imaginative illustrations, while […]

Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

Thoughts on the Abstract and the Subjective in the Work of Rasoulpour and Bowman

In Art Access’s exhibition In Search of Homeland, Iranian artist Heydar Rasoulpour explores themes of personal identity and home in a series of abstracted figural paintings that evoke sentiments of unease and intrigue. Paired with Rasoulpour’s work are the abstract paintings of Clarence Bowman, works that vary widely […]

Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

Bathing in the Uncanny: Madison Donnelly’s Bathhouse at UMOCA

A teacup rests on a saucer, an accompanying spoon at its side. Covered in coarse fur, the seemingly innocuous objects’ deviation from the familiar is jarring and uncomfortable. Swiss artist Méret Oppenheim’s iconic “Luncheon in Fur,” from 1936, is the ultimate Surrealist sculpture, a work that invariably elicits strong responses […]

Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

Capturing the Ineffable: Materiality and Art Making at the Rio Gallery

Art has long sought to capture the transitory and sensory in physical form. From the transformative capabilities of an artist’s two-dimensional canvas to contemporary art’s revolutionary experimentation with media, material doesn’t just inform art, it is art. Or as philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously stated, “The medium is the […]

Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

A Newcomer’s Story: Jiyoun Lee-Lodge’s Enchanting Drawings Engulf the Alice Gallery

Major transitions often feel overwhelming, like a wave of dislocation that renders one temporarily paralyzed. Spatial transitions are among the most disarming, engendering unique challenges to the foundation of one’s personal, social and often cultural identity. This idea of “belonging” or existing as an “outsider” has been a […]