Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
Two decades ago, it seemed as though every artist felt compelled to respond to the events of 9/11. Twenty years later, not so many had something to say about the Covid-19 pandemic. Two locally showing artists who did both used water to represent a shapeshifting threat not just […]
December 31, 2022 marked the last day in my studio space of 20 years. 20 years. Thousands of images created, breeding grounds for over 80 shows, tens of thousands of hours of work, collaborations with curators, gallerist, collectors and friends, hundreds of studio visits and tens of thousands […]
According to a satirical poster by the Guerrilla Girls, the premier advantage of being a woman artist is “Working without the pressure of success.” Down their list a few places comes, “Being reassured that whatever kind of art you make it will be labeled feminine.” That second permission […]
You might have heard a variation of this over Easter dinner (or whatever the matriarch at your table called Sunday’s meal): “The Great Salt Lake has already gone up three feet!” A vague enough statement — three feet from what, you might ask. But the implication is clear: […]
When the late Art Danto, then a leading American philosopher and one of the stars of art criticism, identified the 1990s as “the decade of women artists,” he specifically referred to those who had achieved national or international recognition for what we now call Contemporary Art. The sculptor […]
It’s a worn cliché, the idea that we should think “outside the box.” But sometimes the metaphor rings with the sound of truth, especially when the box is an actual one. Kristina Lenzi was, in her words, “on a rampage” to put performance art on Utah’s map, but […]
When, in the 19th century, French and English painters figured out how to make the impact of light on paper permanent, they invented photography. But that wasn’t the beginning of the search for a way to accelerate the labor of drawing. They and other artists had been playing […]
Disaster is rich fodder for artists, from Aflred Sisley, the French Impressionist who painted the 1876 flood of Port-Marly, to Utah’s Lenka Konopasek, of whom Ann Poore wrote, “Konopasek is always blowing things up or burning them down … disaster is her thing.” So when fire first unveiled […]
Tory Guilfoyle is an artist, curator, and visual arts professional living in Salt Lake City, Utah. She studied photography at Savannah College of Art and Design before transferring to Westminster College where she received a BA in Arts Administration. Tory has spent over 10 years working in the […]
Going forward, we’ll have to be careful. We’ll have to specify whether we’re talking about the “new” Gittins Gallery or the “old” one. The old one is located in the University of Utah’s fine arts building, that towering Brutalist hunk of concrete slab and wood trim that can […]
What could the adjective “homemade” possibly mean to someone who is homeless? At the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, the first of 13 exhibits offers an answer of sorts. Back in 1993, artist Willie Baronet, finding himself struggling with the dilemma of how to react to homeless persons […]
“Go West,” was Horace Greeley’s exhortation. The West meant the future, opportunity, a supposed blank slate upon which to write one’s own narrative. At least for the “young man” of his audience. But Alexandria “Inez” Garcia has been going east, to the past, on a journey to discover […]
People come to Utah for many reasons. At the top of the list, there’s completing a spiritual passage. Then there are the National and State Parks and Monuments, which are known worldwide. Skiing draws whole planeloads from large cities with no ski slopes. The first time my family […]
“I think flowers represent our universal desire to appear like we have our crap together,” observes Emily Fox King, whose majestic floral still life paintings in oil on canvas declare that Spring has sprung at Phillips Gallery – while outside, Nature waffles between snowstorms and 80 degrees. “These […]
The entire historical range of mimetic artistry — the copying of natural appearances — is essentially on display at Ogden Contemporary Arts in a single exhibition: Tamara Kostianovsky’s Mesmerizing Flesh. Best known from its Western version, beginning in the Renaissance, which began in several parts of Europe around […]
Lenka Konopasek, a Utah artist who emigrated to Utah from the Czech Republic, has documented disasters in her art involving humans and nature in many ways: tornados, mega storms, explosions, fires, even personal accidents; and yet when Modern West Gallery invited their artists to submit work concerned with […]
There can be few more mysterious and daunting creative tasks than designing new buildings. In recent centuries, the process inevitably began with the shape of a box, the result of natural construction materials, the need for stability, and for the final product to fit with existing usage. The […]
