Daily posts on happenings in Utah’s visual arts community.
4/19 SLTRIB: A UVU student’s artwork was rejected from a school exhibition. Here’s how she made sure her work was seen. In the art world, rejection can be the end all. It can hinder creativity, put an end to an artwork’s fledgeling life, or catalyze a creative […]
“Art is not a luxury … it is foundational to the health and well-being of society.” Utah artist Emily Christensen McPhie has been honored with the 2025 Governor’s Mansion Artist Award, joining a distinguished group of creatives recognized for their impact on Utah’s cultural landscape. McPhie’s work — […]
PLEASE, NO MORE ART The Utah Division of Arts & Museums has announced a temporary pause on accepting new artwork donations as of June 1, 2025. This pause is due to the agency’s transition to a new storage facility located at the forthcoming Museum of Utah. During this […]
Historically, ceramics have existed on the margins—labeled “craft” or “decorative”—but Katie Lee-Koven says they are increasingly recognized as essential to understanding 20th-century modernism and beyond. This is one reason she was drawn to The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA), where she has been director and chief […]
Linda C. Smith, founder and Executive/Artistic Director of Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT), has been selected to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Utah. The university’s Board of Trustees recently announced that Smith, alongside I. King Jordan, Julie A. Lassonde, and Cecil O. Samuelson Jr., will be […]
Spy Hop Productions has named Larissa Trout as its next executive director, the organization announced. A longtime member of the Spy Hop team, Trout will step into the role on March 21, 2025. With more than 15 years at the nonprofit youth media arts organization, Trout has served […]
For Springville Museum of Art director Emily Larsen creating exhibitions is about forging connections between people and the larger human experience. It’s a philosophy rooted in a life-changing moment at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. As an LDS-missionary facing a mental health crisis, Larsen made the difficult decision […]
2/24 How Craft Lake City’s Scholarship Helped One Artist Reclaim Her Craft What if the biggest obstacle to becoming an artist wasn’t talent, but money? For Steph Alpizar, a local painter and crochet artist, financial limitations dictated everything from the materials she used to the way she shared […]
You never know where an exhibition might take you. For Jessica Kinsey, Executive Director of the Southern Utah Museum of Art, an exhibition experienced in Oklahoma ultimately brought her to Utah. Originally from Oklahoma and raised in Indiana, Kinsey returned to her birth state to study art history […]
When Kasey Lou Lindley visits an exhibition she looks at it through the eyes of both an artist and a curator. A multidisciplinary artist based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Lindley approaches her work through the lens of intersectional ecofeminism, addressing place-based issues with a focus on nature, […]
The 38th Annual Sears Invitational Art Show & Sale, hosted at the Sears Art Museum in the Eccles Fine Arts Center at Utah Tech University, has named its top award recipients. This year’s showcase features over 200 artists from Utah and the Western United States, with a variety […]
For Janalee Emmer, the transformative power of exhibitions remains at the heart of her curatorial philosophy. Whether engaging with medieval altarpieces, contemporary landscape photography, or Renaissance sculpture, she sees exhibitions as portals into other worlds, capable of reshaping how we see and experience art. Emmer, director of the […]
When asked about artistic influence, Courtney Derrick doesn’t turn to the history books or international art stars, but to someone closer to home: Randall Lake. After earning her BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Utah in 2002, Derrick left the state and worked for a […]
For Vanessa Romo, art is more than a discipline or a profession; it is a way to navigate and understand the complexities of life. Her inspirations—Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, and Maryann Webster—act as pillars that inform her artistic practice, influencing both her subject matter and her approach to […]
2/5 SLUGMAG: “Where Art and Community Meet”: The Curatorial Ethos of Michelle Pace Art is a very vulnerable gift,” says Michelle Pace, artist and curator of the Urban Arts Gallery’s 2025 exhibition Shades of Expression. “Art comes with judgement and opinion: positive, negative, whatever.” For Pace, an artist, […]
For Laurie Lisonbee, art is a meditative, almost metaphysical process. “Art is a fascinating search for something that is coming into consciousness and making itself known,” she explains. “The process of artmaking then gives physicality to what was formerly intangible and unknown.” Her paintings combine traditional realism with […]
“I was almost 30 when I started my bachelor’s degree at Weber State,” recalls Amber Peck. Having stepped away from college years earlier to raise her growing family, Peck found herself deeply immersed in the complexities of motherhood. “I was depressed, and I needed something for me. So, […]
At the end of 2024, V. Kim Martinez finished a four-year tenure as chair of the Department of Art and Art History. She begins the new year on sabbatical, preparing for a two-month residency in a recently devastated Los Angeles. Martinez is an artist and educator whose work […]
