Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
It’s all Hegel’s fault. Abetted, in his time, by Clement Greenberg. It’s this idea that history is working along a single path, towards some specific end. (You could blame the early Christians as well). It’s the type of myopic concept that, in the art world, gets us talking […]
Two small panels among her nearly 30 works currently in the Dibble space at Phillips Gallery may represent a moment of freedom and spontaneity that Nancy Vorm needed to make for herself amidst the meticulously controlled efforts seen around them. Their titles, “Sojourn 1” and “Sojourn 2,” confirm […]
The history of art, like the structure of the physical universe, has become a settled matter — a grand paradigm — in the last few years. Each now has a story that will stand the test of time, or until a new age demands a different theory: whichever […]
Midvale is catching up to other Utah municipalities who have put themselves on the Utah art map as havens for mural art: places like Provo — more than two dozen in their downtown area — and South Salt Lake — which, with 5 dozen and counting, has the […]
Like the classic notion of beauty, traditions of craftsmanship were often rejected by modern art. For much of the last century, artists felt a need to make works that were not only ugly by conventional standards, but crude. Many still do, but clearly Dan Toone is not one […]
Jorge Rojas is a master of the minimal. Visibly obvious in his latest exhibition Material Meditations at the Utah Vally University Museum of Art, Rojas’s decades-long exploration of tactile materials reveals deep intrinsic meanings that may not be obvious at first glance. “I begin a piece with a […]
If the name Eccles sounds familiar, that is likely due to its ubiquitous use on public buildings throughout Utah, and even surrounding states. David Eccles, a Scottish immigrant, came to Utah in the late 1800s. He and his wife Bertha, a Danish immigrant, made Ogden, Utah their home […]
If a doorway is seen to be standing all by itself, without a building or even a single wall to justify its presence, it’s probably either a ruin or a monument. Or both. Door frames are normally built stronger in order to survive despite their inherent weakness, since […]
The Springville Museum of Art’s Spring Salon is the largest annual exhibition of work by Utah artists in the state. More than 1000 works are entered for consideration each year. From these, the museum manages to hang several hundred on their ground floor galleries. The Salon is too […]
“Regina is a compact, trapezoid-shaped tower, like a slender version of a ziggurat, the temple structure that spread across the Fertile Crescent three thousand years BC, which almost certainly inspired the story of the Tower of Babylon. Where ziggurats were made of sun-dried clay bricks, however, this tower […]
The Springville Museum of Art’s Spring Salon is the largest annual exhibition of work by Utah artists in the state. More than 1000 works are entered for consideration each year. From these, the museum manages to hang several hundred on their ground floor galleries. The Salon is too […]
For a couple of magic years during her adolescence, I drove my step-daughter to and from school five days a week. During those shared moments, one of her favorite things was to tell me her dreams. Eventually I realized her narratives went on far too long for her to be remembering them: that she had, in fact, returned to the dream state and was telling me the dream as she witnesses it continuing. The literary novelist, Robert Olin Butler, describes the process of artistic creation just so, as dreaming while awake, and I realized that I’d had the rare privilege of witnessing that process in play.
That description comes close to accounting for the art of Trent Alvey, in that her works are rooted in abstractions and resist ascribing them to subject matter.
New Mexico artist Eric Garcia is the latest recipient of a spot in Ogden Contemporary Art’s (OCA) artist-in-residence program. The program, as showcased with their inaugural artist-in-residence Ya La’Ford aims, to bring national and international artists to Ogden to investigate via their art issues that affect both Utah […]
The Springville Museum of Art’s Spring Salon is the largest annual exhibition of work by Utah artists in the state. More than 1000 works are entered for consideration each year. From these, the museum manages to hang several hundred on their ground floor galleries. The Salon is too […]
A piece of art is like a fingerprint. Even if two artists use the same tools, processes, inspiration, and subject matter, each finished piece, no matter how similar, will display subtle differences because each artists’ experience is their own and, whether they like it or not, their work is stamped with their unique signature of personal perspective developed throughout their life.
Rose Dall’s “I Was, I Am” utilizes relief typography in contrast to her two-dimensional self portrait. A hand, formed of strong brush strokes, pulls Dall through a cacophony of negative talk and stereotypes that threaten to drown her; her face breaks through the debilitating wave to be embraced by positive phrases of who she really is, her worth, and her essential presence, illuminating the powerful need of a helping hand that people so often struggle to reach for.
Downtown Provo’s Center Street boasts eclectic food, shopping, art and architecture: many buildings date between 1880 and 1930. The street’s culture is an alluring backdrop to the monthly Art Stroll, a self-guided tour of the places, art and people that persuade us to get up, go out, and […]
Jason Lanegan’s “Relic and Icon of a Rural Life” unites a found toolbox with an icon: a model barn made on the scale of the small churches often held by saints in their portraits, here fabricated from building materials and covered with plans and patterns. Inside the box lies a baling hook, a handheld extension of the worker’s arms and fingers, restored to the environment in which it spent its working life. Lanegan’s reliquaries express his faith that his life and its milestones are as valid, and more entertaining, than those of long gone figures whose names few recall.
