Look at the titles of her most recent series of paintings and it’s not hard to guess where Nuha Moretz’ heart lies: “Into the Forest,” “Nature,” “Waterscapes.” “I love nature and all its beauty and that is what I want to capture on a canvas,” says the Yemeni-American […]
Clay artist Suzanne Storer has been working on a project inspired, in part, by her grandmother, Hazel, who invited a hobo to dinner each Sunday during the depression of the 1930s. “It feels like my grandmother is here with me as I work sculpting homeless people here in […]
Alexandra Giannell’s works can feel expansive even when they are only a few inches tall. Though her works are abstracted, the numerous, detailed marks that expand across the surface may conjure waves, hills or even urban settings. They are created through a process of addition and subtraction, often […]
This month, Salt Lake City’s 15th Street Gallery opened an impressive exhibition that features work by Tyler Swain, along with work by Carol Wade and Jenna Von Benedikt. Swain’s work demonstrates his ongoing interest in what he calls “portraits of things” — objects he finds in his daily […]
Ballet led Julie Strong to visual art. Strong grew up in Alpine, Utah, where she studied classical ballet. After high school, she danced professionally with Wisconsin Ballet Theater. Then, when life, marriage, and a son paused her dancing career and brought her back west, to Canada, Montana and […]
You may have seen a lot of Chauncey Secrist’s work in recent shows, without having seen any of his artwork. In the fall of 2021, Secrist was hired as the Exhibitions Director at the Bountiful Davis Art Center and over the past several months has been responsible for […]
Salt Lake City artist Janiece Murray says she is a student of traditional artistic crafts, like gilding, bookbinding, geometry and handmade watercolors. Her studies with Wulf Barsch at Brigham Young University spurred her to learn more about the “crafts of the master artists of old,” which she did […]
The combinations seem perverse, unholy — Claude Monet’s “Poppy Field at Giverny” and a plastic manufacturing plant; a delightful landscape painting by LeConte Stewart and a decomissioned chemical agent disposal facility in Tooele; a Georgia O’Keefe and the Facebook Data Center in Eagle Mountain. But the results are somehow mesmerizing.
The drawings pictured here, on the desk in Alison Neville’s studio, are only days or weeks old, but they belong to a stack of small, quick work spanning almost fifteen years. “Initially they started as a low-anxiety response to keeping a daily sketchbook which I could sketch or doodle on during lunch or other downtime,” the artist says. “The newest problem I’m taking baby steps towards addressing is my fear of using color. Cue sharpies, looking at retro ’60s floral sheets, and slightly bigger paper. I imagine I’ll continue to add to the pile until a conceptual piece gets my attention again but I will always return to drawing as a sort of home base (forgive the sports metaphor, please).”
“My work is an exploration of my spiritual beliefs through a biological lens,” says Emily Quinn Loughlin, a Park City native who earned her B.F.A. in Fibers from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She uses reclaimed materials from local businesses in her fine art pieces. “I begin by developing an element to use as a building block, and then I find unique ways of combining said elements to develop unique, strange, and beautiful objects … Using recycled material is a conscious effort to support the healthy digestion of material goods in our high-throughput consumer society.”
“Planning for the stitches is always a challenge because I have to compose, paint, and then assemble this kind of jigsaw puzzle that never fully comes together as I expect. This process limits a lot of the play that exists in traditional painting because of the inherent need to consider more sculptural issues like gravity and how the various components are not only aesthetic but also have to be considered within a functional framework. For example, I might want to add a component into something for visual balance but I also have to consider how I attach it and if it can bear weight.”
Salt Lake City artist Lis Pardoe says has been listening to the audiobook Getting Unstuck by Pema Chodron. “It is all about meditation in hard times. Through a recent difficult family event, I have also recognized the importance of being still enough to let life move through you, no matter how difficult it may be, and that rest is releasing.”
It’s the latest in a series of vintage campers and RVs in minimalist, atmospheric landscapes the artist has been working on the past couple of years. “The portrayal of aging recreational vehicles trigger memories of trips to new places and the promise of protection from the elements,” says the University of Utah graduate (2012). “The metallic icons can be beautiful in their ghostly solitude. Conversely, they are reminders of eroding, transient artifacts, littering the environment and scarring the landscape.”
Anita Hawkins says that due to the size and complexity of the piece currently in her studio, she has been working on it on and off for over a year. “The focused making of it has been helpful in pushing out everything else,” she says.
A year ago, we were busy at Finch Lane Gallery installing our 35×35 exhibit, a showcase for Utah’s young artistic talent. Then the closures hit. (The exhibit only opened to the public, in a limited way, in June.) A year since the closures, we have decided to check in with […]
