The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.
Several Utah artists, including Edward Bateman and Trent Call, have used the Deseret Alphabet in their work, but none has done so as prolifically as the late Bob Moss. The exhibition in his honor at The Gallery at Library Square in Salt Lake City remembers the vision of […]
Time and time again in these pages, Geoff Wichert has proven the exception so often that one might think it has become the rule, but from my perspective group exhibitions are still the hardest to write about. Not so much the curated exhibition, centered around a theme—those have […]
The folks at Craft Lake City, Utah’s Do-It-Yourself festival, can’t have been unaware of the irony: for their latest “Celebration of the Hand” exhibit they’ve curated works executed by a robotic arm. Cheeky buggers. Displayed outdoors on the Museum of Temporary Change’s placards, Emergence features reproductions of 14 […]
“Monsoon season” has arrived, which is an odd phrase to write in a desert state, but particularly so during one of the hottest and driest summers on record. It’s the term we use for the mid-to-late summer weather cycle that brings sometimes intense afternoon thunderstorms. It typically runs […]
Kristina Lynae’s Flesh and Sinew, on view at The Gallery at Library Square through October 10, turns to the human body—deconstructed, recombined, and reimagined—to probe questions of identity, intimacy, and fragmentation in the present day. Born in California in 1999 and based in Salt Lake City, Lynae came […]
The Grid City Music Festival is back. Now in its fourth year, the homegrown celebration of local music, art and community is gearing up for its most ambitious installment yet, spanning three days, nine stages, and more than 80 local bands. The event runs Friday, August 22 through […]
Waiting to surprise you along the heart of historic Main Street in the former coal mining town of Helper, Utah, the Helper Mini is proving that even small spaces can spark creative conversations. At just 14 inches square—the size of one of those neighborhood “libraries”— this micro-gallery has, […]
Is climate change coming for the arts festivals? Last year, after a $200,000 shortfall representing 10% of its overall budget, the Utah Arts Festival warned it might not survive. Attendance that year was down by 14,000 people. At the time, UAF Executive Director Aimee Dunsmore identified a few […]
In a world where authenticity is prized, we often treat the physical object with much more reverence than its photographic representation. But two exhibits at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) complicate that notion. Repainting the I: The Intermountain Intertribal Indian School Murals presents 11 murals […]
Lots of restaurants and coffee shops will hang your art on their walls. It doesn’t cost them anything. But Tribe Café & Atelier in Springville goes a step further. They’ll brand your work: not content with just decorating their walls, Tribe has found a way to put artists’ […]
It’s the year of the “skier’s subway.” 1965. Park City, Utah. Most of the silver mines are closed, the red light district is shuttered and teetering shacks of weathered wood dot the hills. But a federal loan granted two years before has helped finance the installation of a […]
Tyler Alexander thinks of himself as a bit of a Napoleon. Not the continent-conquering general who rode France’s revolutionary wave to become one of the most fateful figures in European history. Rather, the nephew, an emperor as well, of sorts. He began as the first president of France’s […]
Last month, we received an email message from Vicki Bourns: Expect less. “We” being Artists of Utah, the publisher of 15 Bytes, but also every other arts organization that receives funding from Utah Arts & Museums (UA&M). Bourns being the director of UA&M, the state’s arts division. “Expect […]
You know what town has sponsored surprisingly few murals, especially considering it calls itself “Art City?” That’s right, Springville. Maybe it’s the mural gods holding a grudge—like how rock giants U2 didn’t perform in Salt Lake City for two decades because they got booed off the stage there […]
The Tiny Art Show is back. Again. After an eviction, a Kickstarter campaign, excellent location scouting and some fabulous fine carpentry, the art project that says go little or go home has a new permanent space in downtown Provo. Ever since McKay Lenker Bayer decided to satisfy a college […]
Is it something about the mural itself, this lone wolf set against a giant full moon? Or is it its very visible location, on the corner of West Temple, where it announces itself to 2100 South’s westbound traffic? There must be something, because this is at least the […]
In honor of National Poetry Month, 15 Bytes editor Shawn Rossiter sits down with Utah poet Lance Larsen to discuss his newest collection, Making a Kingdom of It. In this intimate conversation, Larsen reads from the collection and reflects on the nature of poetry, memory, and emotion. Together, […]
They are part ceramic, part painting; filled with girls, in fancy dresses, climbing trees and mountains in exotic landscapes; and there are monsters, lots of monsters, threatening or doing battle with the young ladies. In one work, a girl hefts a giant sword to slice open the gut […]
Historically, ceramics have existed on the margins—labeled “craft” or “decorative”—but Katie Lee-Koven says they are increasingly recognized as essential to understanding 20th-century modernism and beyond. This is one reason she was drawn to The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA), where she has been director and chief […]
Brian Christensen has been spending a great deal of time—and craft—creating ceramic works that look like chunks of rock, the kind you might find littering the Utah landscape. He spends hours building this illusion: forming the mass, carving striations, staining the surface with mineral-like hues. And then, he […]
