On a bookshelf a few feet from where I’m writing this sits a volume that claims to contain “the complete paintings of Vincent van Gogh”—(it should say “surviving,” his mother having burned half his work when she became discouraged). It’s a large and rather heavy book. Nearby, a […]
Explosive colors surround Elisa Gomez. From blues so deep they almost look black to rich yellows and bright scarlet reds. Gomez’s works reach out, inviting their viewers to step closer and take in the stirring colors, compositions, and textures found on their canvases. Like her works, Gomez’s life […]
Any art is at its best when it’s new, when there are no rules as yet and everything waits to be done, rather than everything having been done already. Whether that is also true of the career of the artist is another matter. David Raleigh, whose Push and […]
As a general rule, masks are intended to conceal the wearer’s identity. Why, then, does Hakeem Olayinka routinely conceal the faces of his Nigerian subjects from view? Nigeria is a country that has seen its environment destroyed by outsiders seeking petroleum, even as its own government murders citizens […]
These must be some of the least iconic images of Utah ever to grace the walls of the State Capitol building. In place of, say, that monument to eons of slow erosion, Delicate Arch, an isolated monolith standing in a virtual sea of bare red rock, “Azure Stream” […]
In an overheard conversation prior to our interview, a passerby who knows the artist exclaims, “You made your earrings?!” Instead of a simple yes, Heather Rison opts for, “I make a lot of things,” followed by a smirk. A seemingly simple statement was an apt introduction to this […]
As remarkable as the fiber art works of Judith Scott are in person, it adds another dimension to see her at work in the short film, Judith Scott in the Studio, that plays in rotation with five other short films in the Kimball galleries video space. Here there […]
With an unknown number works of art accepted, the Spring Salon at the Springville Museum of Art — far and away the exemplary annual show, at the definitive repository of homegrown Utah art and artists — defies imagination. Because it occupies almost the entire main floor, flowing from […]
“I could not do this in my head,” Jerrin Wagstaff says as he passes an open palm over “Ultrascape #21,” the latest of his new paintings. This is a man who has spent half his life doing something most people rarely do, which is to create pictures of […]
An influential art gallery doesn’t just record the history of art; they help make it. An excellent example is the current, primarily painting exhibition at Modern West, shared between gallery director and painter Shalee Cooper and Navajo sculptor and painter Sheldon Harvey. When the gallery’s founder and guiding […]
In a postscript to an email I sent, in my capacity as editor, to the staff of 15 Bytes at the beginning of this year, I mentioned that my email responses — never arriving at a whiplash pace — might, for a while, be slower than normal: during […]
The below interview was conducted by Samuel Hanson, loveDANCEmore editor and executive director. It has been edited for clarity. SH: Welcome to 2022. I am sitting with Indigo Cook, who I know as an organizer of performances that include dance, music and visual art through Interdisciplinary Arts Collective. […]
Do you remember that thing you used to do when we were kids? The thing with the turtles. When we lived in the old house by the creek, sometimes in summer it would rain so hard that it would flood, turning the backyard into our very own specimen pond. There were frogs of all sizes, earthworms thick as rope, salamanders slick as snot, and water bugs and crayfish everywhere. But they didn’t hold your interest. Not like the turtles did.
For centuries, “installing” art meant screwing a painting to the wall or a sculpture to a block of stone. Installation wasn’t art, or even something unique to art. Then Marcel Duchamp hung a lot of art high on the walls of a pitch-black room full of ladders and […]
Welcome to our Independence Day issue of READ LOCAL First, our monthly celebration of Utah-related poets and writers. Today, we proudly introduce Jeremy Spencer Rees. Rees, a Texas native, recently finished his undergraduate degree in Utah. In the final year of his undergrad he was awarded second place […]
My late grandfather always asked two questions when house hunting: “Is the school paid for?” and “How far is the nearest liquor store?” So why is David Ericson, whose gallery is in an 1800s red brick 2-story charmer smack next to the downtown DABC, moving to the Avenues […]
“I don’t do strange stuff with Photoshop,” states Paul Dougan, who seems more interested in chatting up the printing process than discussing other aspects of his work. “If the color red is there, it’s the best the camera can do and I can do to keep it red.” […]
