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 her work. But a scholarship from Craft Lake City helped her overcome financial roadblocks and reconnect with her purpose — creating art that connects with others.
Alpizar, now based in Utah, grew up all over the country in a military family. To her parents, who were immigrants from Costa Rica and Colombia, earning a college degree was paramount to their children’s success. Alpizar completed her degree in psychology at the University of Oregon, but like many first-generation students, she found herself saddled with debt. “I have lots of student loans because I didn’t know what I was doing with college or how to apply for financial aid,” she says.
2/23 KSL: Veiled Resin: Local artist innovates new art form, gains national recognition
Behind a nondescript garage door in a row of identical gray units, local artist Steven Bohls crafts colorful, custom resin art for book covers, video game companies and celebrities.
Bohls is an emerging artist who created a patent-pending art style that consists of a sheet of acrylic framed by hardwood and covered in layers of epoxy resin. He typically begins with a layer of resin colored with mica powder that is cured until solid. Then, he uses a CNC woodworking machine to carve portions of his computer-programmed design into the resin, lays another color on top to fill the space and leaves it to cure again. This process is repeated anywhere from two to 18 times and results in 3D-like depth in a 2D-style artwork.
The creation of his art style and his business, Veiled Resin, began when Bohls started dabbling in stained glass art. As he started looking for better ways to make more precise cuts to the glass —such as cutting the materials with water jets —he thought, what if he filled the negative space with epoxy resin?
2/19 CITY WEEKLY: Lost Acorn Gallery art and event space profile : Owners Mitchell Harned and Parker Thompson create a community venue for their SLC homies and beyond.
Tucked away on the corner of 6th Ave and L Street, Lost Acorn Gallery is one of the few spots left in Salt Lake City fully dedicated as a community art space. The owners, Mitchell Harned and Parker Thompson, stay busy. While these places are fewer and farther between nowadays, the venue has been open for four years, and is in full swing.
Harned and Thompson sat down with City Weekly to discuss the gallery, which is divided into a working area for artists in the back and a small-sized gallery area in the front. Harned teaches his glass-making passion through classes. “Our main income is teaching classes about stained glass, fused glass and blown glass,” Harned explains.
2/18 Cody Chamberlain on “The Open Container” podcast
“Doug opens the episode by diving into the significance of the wilderness as a source of inspiration and creativity, emphasizing that the desert offers a unique perspective that can rejuvenate our minds and spirits.
He then speaks with Cody Chamberlain, an accomplished artist with deep roots in Utah’s landscapes. Cody shares insights on how his lifelong engagement with the natural world informs his artistic practice and fosters a commitment to environmental stewardship.
Doug and Cody explore the essential role of art in navigating contemporary challenges, urging listeners to recognize the value of wild spaces in preserving our humanity amidst the cacophony of modern life.”
2/14 SLTRIB: How ‘an obsessive art project’ became a 3-foot-tall Provo art installation
People were lining up for an hour outside the Alma Gallery during a recent Friday night gallery stroll — waiting to get into the hottest art exhibition on Provo’s historic Center Street.
It’s also the smallest.
Inside an alcove about 3½ feet wide, 3 feet deep and 3 feet high, 8-year-old Luna Hiatt and her mother, Yahaira Marin, crouched inside, pointing at pocket-sized pastel works of water pools and mountain landscapes. At the cubby’s entrance, a pair of magnifying glasses were available for viewers wishing to get a closer look.
Marin said her daughter loves to play with tiny things, like the play food of her Barbie sets. Sometimes, Marin said, Hiatt will wear Barbie’s teensy shoes on the ends of her fingers.
UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Categories: Mixed Media
