Nathanael Read working at Saltgrass Printmakers.

Nathanael Read’s BFA from the University of Utah is in painting and drawing, but these days you’re most likely to find him hovering around the presses at Saltgrass Printmakers playing with ferric chloride. 2018 was a good year for the printmaker, painter, illustrator and “wanna-be comic book artist,” with exhibitions at Miri Gallery, Springville Museum of Art, Kimball Art Center, and South Cobb Art Alliance in Austell, GA.

He hopes to follow that up with an equally productive 2019. “Putting on a solo show, teaching at Kimball Art Center, participating in an internationally curated show, and applying for grad school” are all in his view.

“My art practice examines the journey of humans experiencing the tension between the sacred and the profane,” he says. “I explore this tension through a variety of social and personal iconography.” In 2019 that iconography will come from a newly forged connection to the Azores through his wife, the granddaughter of an Azorean immigrant. Peering through the lens of an outsider, he’ll explore what it means to be connected to an archipelago that has a whaling tradition nearly as old as the Portuguese settlement of the islands.

Keep tabs on the work at his website, www.nathanaelread.net, and Instagram account, @readmeink.

What’s New (2019) curated by Emily Larsen

What's New

Every January we check in with Utah artists to see what the new year holds in store for them.