Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
In Roger and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, Maria says that “when God closes a door, he opens a window,” alluding to the hope of new opportunities presented in the face of current obstacles. When an artist chooses to work from within a specific culture and experience, possibly […]
Carly White is easy to pick out in a crowd — her red hair and bright smile make sure of that. It’s even easier to identify her as some sort of creative type, dressed as she often is in a perfectly styled, colorful mix of vintage and modern […]
Portraits are almost awkward by definition: how to pose; to smile or not to smile; what to include in the background. All these decisions, and the primary decision to have ones portrait painted in the first place, give all but the best portraits a sense of awkwardness. Self-portraits […]
There are 11 paintings by Pablo Cruz-Ayala, collectively titled Intersections of an Immigrant, at Finch Lane Gallery and one at Salt Lake Community College, where it’s part of their 75th Anniversary Alumni Show. In them, Cruz-Ayala employs a wide variety of media, but the first impression they make […]
At South Salt Lake’s newest art gallery, Material, collaboration and community are the same word. Born from the creative minds of local art personas Jorge Rojas and Colour Maisch, Material stands as a model for the progressive art gallery. “As Salt Lake City continues to grow and rents […]
The Biblical Book of Genesis, with all its great visual tropes — the creation of all from nothing, division of light from dark, story of the Fall, and so on — has been enormously popular with artists at least since Medieval times. The third chapter begins with the […]
There’s not much to say about the Salt Lake Community College’s 75th Anniversary Alumni Show, currently open at the art gallery of the main campus on State Street. Not that there isn’t plenty to say about the 30 works it includes or the same number of artists who […]
When visitors enter the UMFA’s newest exhibition, Tatau: Marks of Polynesia, what appears to be a survey of Samoan tattoos quickly reveals itself to be an exploration of Fa’asāmoa — the Samoan way of life. This is because the two are inextricably linked. As recently as a generation […]
Will it matter to you to know that these winding, twisted orgies of positive and negative space, these three-dimensional doodles spiraling and folding onto each other, these rigid stacks of competing planes frozen in time and space, were made from old skateboards? It would explain some things, like […]
The soaring ceilings and commodious galleries of Ogden Contemporary Arts make an ideal environment for large-scale installations. Two simultaneous exhibitions on view right now prove the point. The staff at OCA, along with independent curator Kelly Carper, have brought in two artists who are well established in their […]
Quilting is rapidly moving from folk art to fine art and Sheryl Gillilan is deep into tiny stitches and fabric scraps. Though she continues her day job as executive director of the Holladay Arts Council (she will retire this fall after some six years of delivering diverse arts […]
In one photo, a man sits with one leg crossed over the other, the dark pants leg of his raised knee interrupting the solid white mass of the cape completely wrapping his torso. The barber stands behind him, trimming his hair with electric shears as he impassively submits […]
However illogical, it’s probably human nature to assume that the worst challenges and disasters happen rarely, while those that occur every day must be trivial. That said, nature cannot be made to follow our thinking. One example: Covid-19, a close relative of the common cold, touched the lives […]
It’s just all so much — the contrasting palettes and swirling forms, the scraped, stained and splattered paint, the disembodied heads and piercing shafts of color. It’s the maximalist expressionism of Matthew Choberka, this month at ‘A’ Gallery. The Weber State University professor has always practiced a style […]
Clayton Williams was a firm believer in himself and in the American Dream. “He did everything he wanted to do,” says his son, actor and director Stephen Williams. “He never thought that he could not do anything.” The realm of possibilities included becoming, at age 60, a successful […]
