Today marks a milestone in Dallin Orr’s career: the installation of a 25-foot domed stained glass skylight in the new North Capitol Building Museum at the Utah State Capitol. Designed by Orr and produced in collaboration with Holdman Studios, where he serves as Lead Artist, the piece is […]
“Art is not a luxury … it is foundational to the health and well-being of society.” Utah artist Emily Christensen McPhie has been honored with the 2025 Governor’s Mansion Artist Award, joining a distinguished group of creatives recognized for their impact on Utah’s cultural landscape. McPhie’s work — […]
Parables, folklore, and traditional stories in general constitute important ways we embody the truths of our cultures: the core reality so often lost in a labyrinth of distorted facts and well-meaning or self-serving untruths. This is, for instance, where we can clearly witness the indisputable and universal second-class […]
Tooele has had a graffiti problem. Walk through the town’s center and you’ll see signs of it—brick walls patched over with mismatched paint, ghostly traces of tags. The marks are subtle now, but they tell the story of a city trying to reclaim its surfaces. The first major […]
Now is a difficult time for transgender people. From the current president’s attacks on what he calls “transgender ideology” and the “sexual mutilation of our youth” on the federal level, to HB 257’s ban on trans people’s ability to use restrooms of their choosing in Utah’s government-owned buildings, […]
In a fever dream, a teenager makes a solitary visit to a relative’s home when no one is around. Descending to the basement, the youth passes swiftly through the familiar game-and-TV room, friendly and open to the sky through windows high in the walls, and enters an inconspicuous, […]
Originally opening its first glassblowing hotshop and showroom nine years ago in Park City’s Iron Horse District, Red Flower Studios now has a second location with a gallery space in the rapidly developing Granary District of Salt Lake City. The new location hosts glassblowing classes and workshops, facilitated […]
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 […]
The history of art doesn’t record how many of those it documents have identified with Sisyphus, the king of Ephyra whose pride and cleverness, especially in regards to cheating death, caused Zeus to condemn him to an eternity of struggling to roll a giant boulder uphill, only to […]
A perennially repeated yet mythical image of the artist holds that each is a solitary figure, working and even living entirely in isolation, whether because unable to get along with others or having no desire to. In reality, the successful artist often resembles more the CEO of a […]
First there was the billboard. Now the phone booth. Interventions by public and private organizations on behalf of the Great Salt Lake continue at pace. Since February of this year, a new billboard in Salt Lake County has been bringing the Great Salt Lake’s condition into sharp public […]
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 […]
In simple rotations of old “American West” postcards, from the time when John Wayne was filmed roaming the deserts of Utah, Phoenix Ostermann’s Ways of Seeing reinvents old imagery of iconic Western landscapes into kaleidoscope compositions. In her artist statement for the show at the Marmalade Branch of the […]
When we think of ceramics, we often picture a thrown vessel, a hand-built sculpture or maybe even our favorite artisan coffee mug—weighty, functional and tactile. But in Porcelain Threads, Dara Hartman turns that notion inside out. Her solo exhibition at Modern West strips away any expectation of heaviness […]
Deep in South Salt Lake, Signed & Numbered framing shop hosts one of NCECA’s 2025 ceramic exhibitions, don’t be careful with me i’m normal. The exhibition, boasting 22 pieces, lies across two rooms of the studio, where the rich scent of cut wood frames the atmosphere. “Care is […]
At the heart of one of the numerous ceramic exhibitions currently in Salt Lake City, as part of the NCECA conference, is a simple but profound premise: to see people too often ignored. “My art stems from my innate desire to make connection with my fellow human beings,” […]
NCECA appears to have taken over every available meter of Utah exhibition space in order to accompany Formation, their 2025 annual conference. The only venues they appear to have missed were those belonging to organizations, like the Nora Eccles Harrison MoA, that have their own invaluable ceramic art […]