An assistant professor at the University of Utah, Erickson treats his classes like a research lab; he might be looking for a cure for the mundane while inoculating his students against their native cultures. He takes his experiences in this laboratory back to his studio and adds to his own visual vocabulary. In genuine humility he may tell you that he never much envisioned commercial success as an artist. Yet, that is exactly what happened.
When I picked up this slim chapbook my first impression was how pretty it is to look at. The cover art resembles a map. Not the newfangled digital kind that talks you over a cliff as soon as you let down your guard–an old-fashioned paper map with carefully […]
In 2013, Ruby Chacon was selected by 200 of her peers as one of “Utah’s 15 most influential artists.” The following profile appeared in Utah’s 15: The State’s Most Influential Artists, published by Artists of Utah in 2014. Ruby Chacón, visual artist, writer, community organizer, and co-founder of Mestizo Institute […]
UTAH’S 15, our program to recognize and honor the state’s most influential artists, RETURNS. And we need your help. It was five years ago. Laura Durham had an idea: ask people to think about who they felt were the state’s most influential artists. At the time, Durham was working […]
Brad Slaugh is a bit of a jokester. You see it in the postcards for the semi-annual open studios event he runs at Poor Yorick Studios (which he has operated for 15+ years): the card inserts the skeleton of Denmark’s famous court jester into an iconic work of […]
Every day Trent Alvey walks up the hillside near her home in Emigration Canyon. She thinks of it as her own little Walden where she can reset her focus for the day. “Even if you go the same time every day, the light changes or the season changes,” she explains. “It’s the same and different simultaneously.” For Alvey, this daily ritual invites the spontaneity she requires of herself as an artist.
Thirty-five years ago Bob Olpin, the legendary chairman of the University of Utah College of Fine Arts, invited an itinerant painting professor to tackle a one-year teaching assignment. Olpin couldn’t know that when he arrived, Sam Wilson would possess qualities that could make him a significant artist. At the same time, Utah was about to surprise Wilson by providing him with the working conditions he needed to produce his art.
In 2013, Joan Woodbury was selected by 200 of her peers as one of “Utah’s 15 most influential artists.” The following profile appeared in Utah’s 15: The State’s Most Influential Artists, published by Artists of Utah in 2014. We almost lost Joan Woodbury to New York. That’s where all […]
No, we’re not a pay-to-play sort of publication. People aren’t sending us a check and expecting us to write an article on them. But we recently sent out an email about our current edition, noting that on average it costs us $125 to produce an article in 15 […]
There’s so much junk on the internet, you begin to wonder why we spend so much time there, but then you come across something like this: on Thursday, Utah County artist Justin Taylor posted a video he created about BMX freestyler Scotty Cranmer, who suffered a life-altering accident […]
Peter Everett, 48, is far more than the soft-spoken professor of first impression. His paintings speak to a remarkably powerful inner core of human spirituality that most people are either unaware of or choose to ignore. His current show at Ephraim’s Granary Art Center demonstrates this through powerful, […]
As an undergraduate student in 2008, I discovered Parsons Dance when I serendipitously checked out a DVD of the company, released in 2001, from a music and dance library. Upon watching it, I fell in love with David Parsons’ quirky choreographic style. One of the pieces on the […]
Figurative artist William "Bill Whitaker died on March 6, aged 74. We remember him with this interview, conducted in 2007 by the late Ehren Clark.
The Ascension of Classical Arts: An Interview With William Whitaker
Many are aware of classical art, but most are unaware of the fullness of the tradition, whose elements are so fundamental to the basic structure of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was a tradition that had its genesis with the Greeks, the Romans, subsequently the Renaissance revival, and a 400-year dominance of the French Academy, only to become obscured, lost amidst the paths of the modern. With limitless forms of contemporary art, are we to find classical art, in its pure and original state, a part of the forefront of mainstream art once more?
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