“Sometimes I love an artwork for the unusual usage of materials, sometimes for the surprising pairing of the content/idea and technique” says Lenka Konopasek, a Czech-born artist who received her BFA degree from the University of Utah and her MFA from Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. […]
It was in a figure structure class at the University of Utah taught be John Erickson that Clinton Whiting was introduced to the drawings of Alberto Giacometti, even if only in reproduction. “They were like nothing I had ever seen before. You could literally see the thought process […]
Jim Jacobs could name a lot of artists he loves — Doris Salcedo, Rachel Harrison, Kaari Upson, Jessi Reaves, Roxy Paine, Martin Puryear, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson — but if he had to pick just one? “Rafael Lozano-Hemmer” says the Philadelphia native who taught art at Weber State […]
David LeCheminant was a glass artist with a decade of experience when he moved from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in 2007. He found the transition difficult — with proper studios and trained assistants in SLC in short supply — so he would return to San Francisco “to work in a proper glass blowing studio.” It was on one of those trips that he visited the newly rebuilt DeYoung Museum where there was a retrospective of Louise Nevelson. “Until that moment, I didn’t believe in love at first sight, but that exhibition changed that idea — and changed the ultimate direction of my career as an artist,” he says.
David Meikle is a Salt Lake City native whose promising career as an artist was signaled early on when, in 1987, he was the state winner in art in the Deseret News Sterling Scholar Competition for high school students. That promise has been fulfilled with various awards and […]
Sundance artist Kent Christensen takes human obsession seriously: Like food, especially food, with an emphasis on dessert. And typically, that is what he paints. He recalls growing up “in the orange, lemon, and avocado groves of Southern California, where I acquired a fondness for orange crate labels, pop […]
“Venus and the Gift,” Sunny Taylor, acrylic on panel, 29×25,” 2017 When she’s creating her paintings, Sunny Belliston Taylor thinks in terms of “constructing” an image, or “building” a surface. “I piece visual information together in a way that feels very sculptural,” she says. “And although my works are […]
Shawn Porter’s works are derived from observation, developed by idea, and realized through a mastery of diverse materials and technique. The physicality of his installations capture the viewer with an aesthetic composed of formal elements and a playful taste for pushing the boundaries of material, balance and weight, […]
Lydia Gravis, an artist who lives and works in Ogden, where she’s gallery director of the Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery at Weber State University, earned her MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Boston. The artist she loves, Julie Mehretu, a native of Ethiopia, […]
Printmaker and artist Martin Blundell, whose son, photographer Simon Blundell, is profiled in February’s edition of 15 Bytes, studied at the U under Robert Kleinschmidt during the mid-70s and is well known for his mixed-media drawings and paintings. He and two partners just sold SDI, a large Salt […]
After studying art in her youth at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the University of Hawaii and Long Beach State University, Brenda Thomas decided to take up painting again when she moved to Park City in 1998 following dual careers in clothing design and motherhood. Landscapes and floral […]
Following a career in electrical engineering, Salt Lake City artist Joe Carter’s childhood connection to objects, where items like salt shakers flew and everything he looked at had an individual personality, returned to him. He went back to school and eventually got his BFA from the U in 2000. Now he […]
Reared in a village north of London (and having moved to Utah some 15 years ago), Santaquin artist Jenna von Benedikt paints both landscapes and abstracts with alacrity. A BYU graduate with a Studio BFA and studies at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy, […]
For February we’re asking Utah artists about a specific piece of art or artist, living or not, local or global, that has sparked their curiosity or influenced their work. We’ll be running some of their responses throughout the month. Following a successful 30-year career in the corporate world, […]
In more than two decades as an artist, naturalist and author, Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen’s work has been shown locally, nationally and internationally. With the sole goal of deepening awareness of the natural world and how it functions, the artist tells us he was “a fairly late […]
For February we’re asking Utah artists about a specific piece of art or artist, living or not, local or global, that has sparked their curiosity or influenced their work. We’ll be running some of their responses throughout the month. The question of “Who Do You Love?” takes on […]
Salt Lake City artist Craig Cleveland, who studied fine art and design at USU and the Art Institute of Chicago, tells us: “Love is an action. Love is a verb. Love is a noun. Love is. Love is a word, and words and their letterforms have played […]
