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.
As a follow up to our article on the history of the serigraph in Utah, we take a look at three Utah artists working with screen prints. University of Utah professor Justin Diggle is known for the deep, rich qualities of his etchings, so you wouldn’t think that […]
Maybe it seemed to come to him in a flash of divine inspiration. Or maybe it was simply a mundanely obvious solution to the task at hand. When Anthony Velonis joined the Work Progress Administration’s poster division during the Great Depression, he became one of scores of artists making […]
In Renaissance workshops, artists often specialized: for a nativity scene or portrait of a noble, one artist might work on all the background landscapes, while another might be called in to paint the folds in a saint’s robes and a third would show off their skills on delicately […]
Emily Hawkins is rummaging around the flat files at Salt Lake City’s Saltgrass Printmakers. She’s looking for sheets of Mylar. “That’s too thick,” Saltgrass director Stefanie Dykes tells her, though she’s not quite sure what Hawkins is looking for. “We use that one for printing,” she says when […]
Tucked up against the mountains at the south end of Utah Valley with a view of Utah Lake to the northwest, Woodland Hills is a quiet, wooded community with large lots and a secluded feel. And the town of just 1500 has a high concentration of artists, six […]
All the state’s big annual shows – the statewides and the invitationals – have their own personalities. Springville’s Spring Salon is as different from UDAM’s Statewide Annual as each is from the Eccles’ Black and White show. Personality is partly a matter of geography (art can be expensive […]
In a postscript to an email I sent, in my capacity as editor, to the staff of 15 Bytes at the beginning of this year, I mentioned that my email responses — never arriving at a whiplash pace — might, for a while, be slower than normal: during […]
Ten years ago, Nathan Florence, a Salt Lake City artist known for his figurative and landscape work, announced his newest project, a documentary film that would explore the Art & Belief movement — a group of Brigham Young University art students in the late 1960s who, dissatisfied with […]
The role the Art Barn has played in nurturing contemporary art in Utah cannot be overstated. Now known as the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a retrospective exhibition in its Street Level Gallery, the community-driven organization was created during the Great […]
Utah’s governor made national news when, faced with a historic drought years in the making, dire predictions for the upcoming wildfire season and vastly depleted reservoirs, he asked his fellow citizens to pray for rain. (He did also urge land owners to let their yards and parking strips […]
(This article was written while Annie Blake was in hospice. On Dec. 16 her husband announced on Instagram that she had passed.) “How could it be possible to take in all the sad stories and become big enough to hold them all? Or to compress them […]
When the pandemic hit, Utah Chamber Artists’ artistic director Dr. Barlow Bradford resisted pivoting to virtual concerts. Large groups of people singing live in enclosed spaces was definitely out. But recording separate individuals singing in their own homes? Where in that process, he thought, was the art? But […]
Never underestimate the influence of teachers, wherever you may find them. Connie Borup, now one of Utah’s best-known landscape painters, hadn’t the slightest inclination of becoming an artist until she met an art history teacher in Germany. Borup was raised in Kaysville, Utah, a town that was still a largely rural community dominated by fields in the 1950s. Growing up in that environment has its advantages, but Borup always knew she wanted “to get out.” Which explains why she jumped at the chance to become an exchange student. “That was such an eye-opener,” she recalls. “A 17-year-old Mormon girl leaving her town and going to Germany.” At the gymnasium in Cologne, she met Herr Beppo, who opened her eyes to art. “I made a decision right then — I’m going to be an artist.”
“Works by famous men upstairs, and feminist art that will get you mad at the patriarchy (though hopefully not your patriarch) downstairs.” That’s the text message I sent to my teenage daughter, telling her that if she and her friends were looking for something to do that Friday […]
It’s a situation that will ring true for many of the artists who make their living as arts professionals: “I spend a lot of time helping other artists show their work and have opportunities, and I love my job,” says Lydia Gravis, director of Weber State University’s Mary […]
If it weren’t for art galleries, Shon Taylor might never have met his wife. It was Kayo Gallery, 13 years ago. “Wouldn’t have happened if that gallery didn’t exist,” he says. “Wouldn’t have happened if we all just sat at home and clicked ‘like’ on Instagram.” The social […]
Parisians hated the Eiffel Tower when it first went up. They weren’t crazy about I. M. Pei’s Louvre Pyramid, either. Both, however, have become iconic landmarks. Tourist attractions. Destinations in and of themselves. And that’s what Salt Lake City is counting on with Ned Kahn’s “Pages of Salt,” […]
