Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
In her opening remarks on Friday, October 7, 2022, UMFA executive director Gretchen Dietrich stated that Air (on display until Dec. 11) is an intentionally diverse exhibit. Former UMFA curator Whitney Tassie’s artist selections range from local artists like Virginia Cathrall highlighting the air quality issues experienced here […]
This essay was published in conjunction with Frank McEntire’s exhibit Through a Narrow Window: our impact on the environment, Snow College Art Gallery, Aug. 29 – Oct. 14, 2022. All images: installation views from the exhibit, courtesy the artist. These jars were provided by scientists, artists, philosophers, historians, […]
A medium shot of a forest, with a hint of sky at the top, dense foliage on skinny trees, shrubbery surrounding their lower parts. But what’s this? The black-and-white image covers only the top two thirds of the page, while the lower third includes not only the continuing […]
There’s an old saying among artists, and there can be no doubt whose boast it is, that painters make pictures of things, while sculptors make things. That distinction may come to mind while contemplating the works of Anna Laurie Mackay, currently on view as part of Interwoven, a […]
What is Art? This is a common question, perhaps even a tired question, but one that any lover of arts has or will encounter at some point in their studies. It was the question that filled my brain while walking through the Eccles Art Center’s Art In Bloom […]
In Utah, modernism was welcomed with open arms by only a belated minority. Three decades after New York’s Armory Show — when the various isms of modern art developed in Europe were revealed to the American public — artists in the state of Utah were still struggling with skeptical peers and a bewildered if not belligerent public — a public that often chose not simply to ignore the new isms, as they might with artistic trends today; they attacked, or at the very least, mocked them. Modern artists, to much of the Utah public, were considered incompetent or deranged, seen as hucksters and commies.
When Emily Hawkins exhibited two pigment-printed photographs from her “Matriarch Diptych” series this year in the Bountiful Davis Art Center’s juried annual, and one took first prize, her image of a luminous presence prompted speculation that she meant to invoke a divine being. Indeed, she may have had […]
There’s an old story about someone who stared at something so intently it began to smolder — and eventually burst into flames. It’s suggested this is only possible when one looks at it the way artists look at their subjects. And no, they don’t look at things the […]
Nestled away from the sounds of the city, an art studio sits in Ogden’s foothills. To the average eye, it masks itself as a beautiful house, with architecture unlike others in the area. The studio was designed and built by the artist who works in it, Paul Butler. […]
The first Jim Jacobs sculpture that many Salt Lake City gallery denizens may recall seeing was a combination of two wooden objects, one a rather plain chair and the other a sapling big enough to be identified as a tree, yet small enough to fit into the high-ceilinged […]
Anyone who follows the excellent and very full presentation schedule at UMOCA has seen the aesthetic virtuosity of Jared Steffensen in action. Ironically, though, Curator of Exhibitions was not his first choice for a day job. Steffensen identifies strongly, perhaps first of all, with skateboards and boarding, almost […]
Tiffini Porter couldn’t not do this. “This” being a crisp new gallery space — sharp white walls, weathered concrete floors — tucked into a nondescript warehouse space in Salt Lake City’s Granary district. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time,” says the newly minted gallerist. […]
When a living cell divides in half, first it duplicates its DNA and the strands move to opposite ends of the interior. Then it pinches itself between them until it separates into two new cells, each containing one complete set of genes. The new cells are called “daughters,” […]
Seventy years ago, Utah artist Lynn Fausett wanted to turn the administrative building of the soon-to-be-demolished state penitentiary into an art center. Other ideas for the old prison’s acreage (now home to Sugar House Park and Highland High School) included a reconstruction of the old Salt Lake Theatre […]
Susan Kirby loves Mexico — so much so that her last vacation there lasted six years. I mean, she bought a house (“a modern one”) in San Miguel de Allende, adopted two Mexican cats, Frida (smile) and Brigit, then settled in and just painted. Well, she took tango […]
The pandemic interrupted many habits and routines. Two years later, some of them are welcome losses, a few we may have resumed regretfully, while the resumption of others are joyful rediscoveries of the before times. Jaunts to the Salt Lake City Library, which for 70 years has provided […]
Zachary Proctor paints moments of courage and triumph: race car drivers, acrobats, horsemen and stunt jumpers. But his works are also full of foreboding and disaster: a race car smashing into a wall, a mammoth shark seen rising to engulf a small boat (see our review from Feb. […]
