Articles published on historical Utah artists.
The first generations of female Utah artists, those who worked from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th, lived through troubling times including two world wars, the 1918 influenza epidemic and the Great Depression. Times of crisis like these propel people to thoughts […]
Women entrepreneurs were lauded in the Salt Lake Tribune during Women’s Business Week in March of 1935. The paper reported on a national report that read, “These women owners of their own businesses may occasionally be discouraged, but they are never bored. They have found a satisfying medium […]
“Scarce indeed is the smart woman who does not have affiliation with her favorite organization,” Salt Lake Tribune journalist Grace Gether wrote in 1937, reporting on the importance of clubs to the greater Salt Lake City community. Artists were no different, there was “scarce indeed” a Utah woman […]
Utah women artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were formidable: they traveled the world, led art movements and artist societies, and advocated for the importance of artmaking and collecting to a broader Utah public. These women were not wallflowers. They were actively engaged in creating community, meaning and transformation through the visual arts.
Early on in our relationship, Tom Alder had to convince me on an important point: a lack of evidence should not get in the way of a good story. Evidence should be sought, Tom conceded, arguments for plausibility laid out, but ultimately, if nothing disproved a story or […]
“Jackson Lake at Twilight” by George Beard, Courtesy of L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University. The LDS culture places a strong emphasis on family history, encouraging its members to research genealogical data as well as preserve the stories of family members. In this cultural endeavor, a […]
A group of vegans, among them artists, teachers and musicians, heads to the hills for communal living where they develop a unique practice of partner sharing. Northern California in the 1960s? No, Juab County, Utah in 1918.
A review of Donna Poulton’s biography of pioneer artist Reuben Kirkham, recently published by Cedar Fort press.
A profile of Hilma Mole Payne, on the occasion of her retrospective at the Springville Museum of Art.
In our November 2011 edition of 15 Bytes Tom Alder took a look at the mystery of Florence Truelson, an eccentric Utah artist of the first half of the twentieth century. As Tom reported, the builder of a unique house on the west side of town – known […]
On the occasion of our ten-year anniversary, Tom Alder reexamines some of his old columns and shares a few new stories he has picked up along the way.
A local family looks for the portrait of their mother painted in 1936 by Lee Greene Richards.
