Artist Profiles | Visual Arts

Tony Smith: We’re All Mad Here

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In 2001, after retiring as a professor of art at the University of Utah, Frank Anthony (Tony) Smith also retired from painting — and the art market.

During his 40-year career as an art teacher at the University of Utah and other universities and workshops, Smith succeeded as a dual-career player in the local and national art markets. He is best known for his innovative, illusionist nod to trompe l’oeil through his groundbreaking use of stenciling, cutting, taping, and airbrushing. “He’s fooling you, folks,” wrote Susan Mendelsohn in an undated essay. “These paintings are fancy bags of cheap tricks. They are trap doors and fake bottoms, things up his sleeve and wires and mirrors … It is an invisible experience in the imagination, which shows us how the world looks through Tony Smith’s eyes. Because of his pictures, we can ride piggyback into his encounter with reality. It’s a very remarkable ride.”

Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

Capturing the Ineffable: Materiality and Art Making at the Rio Gallery

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Art has long sought to capture the transitory and sensory in physical form. From the transformative capabilities of an artist’s two-dimensional canvas to contemporary art’s revolutionary experimentation with media, material doesn’t just inform art, it is art. Or as philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously stated, “The medium is the […]

Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

First Dates, Homesickness, and Desert Murals: Selected Works from the Intermountain Indian School, 1950-1984

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‘“Where are my people?” the mountains cry out.’ This line from a young Diné (Navajo) poet sets the tone for an exhibition curated by Dr. James Swensen, Melanie Allred, and Meagan Anderson. Featuring visual art, poetry, and ephemera produced by students of the Intermountain Indian School, the display […]