“Our only hope of finding grace was to tell our stories to each other,” writes Melanie Rae Thon in an essay titled “You Can’t Avoid Trouble: First, Body.” Both the line and the essay’s title are apt descriptions of Thon, who has been crafting graceful and haunting stories […]
Printmaking exists as one of art’s most revered mediums. Its influence is impossible to overstate, as early practitioners were responsible for disseminating the written word and visual illustration to countless individuals for whom such access was previously limited. In the modern era, fewer artists aspire to be […]
I have long been acquainted with Nancy Takacs’ poetry through her beautiful chapbooks. Thus, it was a pleasure to read so many of her poems in her latest collection, Blue Patina, published by Blue Begonia Press. In these poems, I continue to see how deeply the natural world […]
Kevin Red Star’s paintings at Modern West Fine Art give the immediate impression of no-nonsense stability and strength. Their compositions—featuring mounted Crow warriors, tipis against starry skies, or profiles of chiefs in traditional costume—are balanced and deliberate. Most shapes are fully delineated. The predominant colors are subtle, earthy […]
There’s a work in Ideologue you can’t avoid. It’s a music video whose soundtrack floods the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s (UMOCA) main hall, its saccharine lyrics following you from one room to the next, eating away at your skull like a cavity finding its way to a […]
by Nancy Takacs I am drawn to these truthful, soulful poems in Flicker. They are natural in their telling, in a voice that trusts itself, and is wise, although it doesn’t mean to be. The poet tries to transcend grief through repentance, to know what will work, searching […]
At her most recent exhibition at Salt Lake City’s Phillips Gallery, Korean-born artist Hyunmee Lee unveiled a new body of work: paintings marked by large floating objects in bright colors, and ceramics and works on paper distinguished by her use of gestural black strokes. The paintings are now […]
For the first time since the 1980s, Dixie State University’s art department will be offering an introductory course in printmaking in the fall and adjunct Professor Abraham McCowan has big hopes for what it will mean about the future of printmaking in southern Utah. “I have a lot […]
Factoid: White men can’t dance. (Well there was Baryshnikov, Nureyev, David Bowie. . .) But this has nothing to do with our book review—just an attention-grabber. Factoid: Most artists can’t write about their own work . . . Fact: It’s much easier to write long than short. So […]
I’ll drown my belief, to have your babies…and wash your swollen feet. Just don’t leave. Don’t leave. “True Love Waits”, Radiohead Such desperate subjugation of self, in an effort to pair with another, to mirror love, to feel heard, feels strained and achingly heartbroken when […]
Every now and then I run across a poem so tasty I’m greedy for more by the same poet, which is how I felt after finding Rob Carney’s prize winning “Seven Pages from The Book of Sharks” on terrain.org. The poem tells a wholly invented myth of sharks […]
It took a lot of moxie to even consider turning AJ’s Kwik Mart into a decent art gallery, but Terence K. Stephens has done just that – even creating a “nice urban lofty kind of thing,” as he describes his elegant upstairs quarters, to reside in with his […]
