Every January we check in with Utah artists to see what the new year holds in store for them.
Orem painter Josie Bell says she continues to be surprised by how much her early childhood in Brazil continues to affect her work. “I didn’t know those imprints would reawaken someday and bring me to subjects that relate to nature and ecological themes,” she says. She speaks of […]
“I usually start each painting with only the urge to address a certain range of experience or moods, not preconceiving any structural forms,” says Marcus Vincent. “Color relationships are the initial decision where after structural concerns are felt, indicated, destroyed, revised, and destroyed and revised again.” Born in […]
“The one constant in my life has been writing and publishing poetry,” says Steve Creson, a Seattle-native multimedia visual artist, writer, photographer, 16-mm filmmaker and occasional performance artist. In November 2020, Salt Lake City’s Elik Press published his Big Day / New and Selected Poems, with afterward by […]
David Dibble has a thing for hay. The Orem painter was raised on a farm in Davis County, Utah, where he was influenced by the landscape from an early age. After graduating with a BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University and graduate work at the Academy of […]
McGarren Flack is ready to go big. A professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Flack began painting in the fall of 2002, while in the Illustration program at Brigham Young University. After graduation, he pursued an MFA at the University of Utah. Flack, however, says his […]
Before COVID, Madison Donnelly was headed to Yale. Like so much else for so many others, that was put on hold. Donnelly is one of Utah’s more promising young artists. While still working on her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Utah, she earned a juror’s award […]
Jerrin Wagstaff spends a lot of time on the internet, and watching TV. But he’s no couch potato. It’s work. The BYU (BFA) and California State University, Long Beach (MFA) graduate, who is currently an instructor at Brigham Young University, is a painter whose works “address the nature […]
The way Andrew Rice describes his current situation may encapsulate how a lot of us feel: “I’ve been trudging along, trying to see what happens next…” For the past year, Rice was involved in The Open Room, which, as Ann Poore described it for 15 Bytes, began in […]
If you’ve been to the Eccles Theatre in Salt Lake City, you’ve experienced Laura Sharp Wilson’s work: she created the terrazzo floor design beneath your feet. Wilson is an East Coast girl. After earning a BFA at Carnegie Mellon, she spent time as an intern at the Fabric […]
Artist and poet Rebecca Everett, a Utah native who studied painting at Brigham Young Unviersity with Robert Marshall and Trevor Southey, has lived many places, pursuing artistic activities in each one: in Bavaria, she studied weaving, stained glass and pottery; in England, she began work in photography and […]
2020 was undoubtedly tough, but Vincent Mattina remarks that it might have been his most productive year yet. He co-curated his first show, Anthropocene, at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center (UCCC), where, along with works by Grant Fuhst and Chauncey Secrist, his works explored environmental themes, while concurrently […]
Rolling into the new year, Liberty Blake is working on collages for a landscape show at Modern West in March as well as some smaller works for the UK organization Art on a Postcard, as part of their upcoming International Women’s Day auction event. She’s also one of […]
Retro Furniture Changes Colors — Chroma Gallery
In the late ’80s, Erdmann ran the Salt Lake Contemporary Gallery in downtown Salt Lake where he showed minimalist and color-field art at a time when “Mark Rothko wasn’t a household word.” Reception to the gallery was not overwhelming and it eventually closed down. Since that time, abstract art has failed to achieve a pervasive presence in Utah. The Salt Lake Art Center has had more and more exhibits highlighting contemporary art and Phillips Gallery has survived showing abstract work, but few other venues for abstract art have proven viable…
