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.
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 […]
Four rows of colossal ceramic heads line the right wall of the gallery, arranged in an inverted pyramid shape. While each has been crafted from the same model, every head is conferred with a distinctive color or adorned stenciled designs, ranging in patterns and words. The various symbols […]
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 […]
A small animal’s skeleton is visible from inside a domed sphere at the center of an elaborate golden frame. The adornment evokes the gilded macabre of a medieval Christian reliquary. Throughout And No Birds Sing at Nox Contemporary, one sees Frank McEntire’s love of interesting and unusual found […]
A linen print tacked to the gallery wall beckons our gaze with its earth-colored, vertically-configured shapes. At proximity, the planes of color converge with bold, textured patterns and strategically placed outlines that reveal the underlying canvas. Immersed in the scene is a standing figure — a maid — […]
Space is a commodity with resounding significance as of late. The isolation necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic has made more immediate the symbolic power of spaces — home, work, school among them — and the perceived absence or overindulgence of one, which may drastically alter our relation to […]
An embracing couple is captured in front of a narrowing, leaf-covered path. Slightly off-center in the composition, we see one figure’s back, while the other figure is facing us, gazing confidently in our direction, one arm cradling the lower back of her partner, while the other hand just […]
On July 3, 2020, The New York Times reported that the Black Lives Matter protests in response to the May 25th death of George Floyd likely constituted the largest in United States history, garnering a half-million participants in over 500 locations at their peak. The magnitude of these […]
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 […]
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 […]
On Saturday, Nov. 23, a small group formed in a Salt Lake City backyard filled with chairs and an outdoor heater. After socializing and viewing an art exhibition in the backyard’s small gallery/shed, the group listened to a 20-minute lecture by artist Patrick Durka before time was opened […]
On October 25, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) unveiled four sensational paintings as part of a collaboration with the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Art Bridges, a foundation focused on increasing regional access to American art. The UMFA has selected three paintings from the Smithsonian’s rich […]
Jorge Rojas was meant to be an artist. A soothsayer might have predicted it — seen it in the cards, the tea leaves, or, in Rojas’ case, the tortilla marks.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A family of three sculpted figures sits atop a pedestal. Ceramic renderings of pre-Columbian figures, the parents are separated from their child, who is encased in a cage. Sadly, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing tragic images of despair and suffering at the U.S.-Mexico border. Emblematic of President Donald […]
