The homey domestic character of Finch Lane Gallery, with its fireplace and wall of windows, contributes to the feeling that the people Aïsha Lehmann’s presents are our hosts: they’ve invited artist and audience to join them in a uniquely civilized gathering. Surrounded by their colorful, intricate wallpapers, coordinated […]
As part of their West of Conventional Mural project Visit Salt Lake is unveiling ten new murals created across the Salt Lake Valley. The largest is probably Bill Louis’ mural on the south wall of the Hobby Lobby at Valley Fair Mall in West Valley City (3601 South […]
From paintings to performance art, photography, and ceramics, Shaw Gallery’s 2021 Biennial Faculty Exhibition has a little bit of everything. With well over 50 works, from 30 artists, this show keeps the viewer on their toes. The themes and ideas explored are just as diverse as the materials […]
“In the heav’ns are parents single? No! The thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal. Tells me I’ve a mother there.” For many years, these words, written by Eliza R. Snow in the 19th-century, were one of the few references to a female deity in the […]
For much of the year, the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy (9575 S State State) has served as a vaccine center in the fight against COVID-19. A new mural on the outside of the building’s entrance serves as another sort of community builder. Traci O’Very Covey and […]
Crosses, again and again, appear in most of these paintings by just-returned-from-Chicago Art Institute Navajo artist Patrick Dean Hubbell. They’re referencing stars, say Modern West gallery assistants. Stars, they point out, appear again and again in Hubbell’s titles. But every small cross, and every large cross, in these […]
There is something fundamental that Darryl Erdmann has in common with his mixed-media artwork, “Divinations,” one of the dozen of his paintings currently on view at the 15th Street Gallery. Divinations are visions drawn from life, such as entrails read by priests of old. And just about everything […]
One woman points an accusatory finger. Another testifies, arm raised. A third pleads, hands clasped, fingers entwined. The fourth stands stoic and defiant, pained eyes gazing away. Words, written in red above each drawing of these women, combine to read, “ALL MOTHERS WERE SUMMONED WHEN HE CALLED OUT FOR HIS MAMA.” Ruby Chacón’s emotive and impactful “All Mothers” focuses on the strength of BIPOC mothers who have endured the loss of their children. The series of collages features the mothers of Trayvon Martin, who was shot by George Zimmerman in 2012, Mariee Juarez, a migrant who died in ICE detention in 2019, and Henny Scott, a teenager who went missing from the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in 2018. The fourth is Chacon’s own mother.
Helper is like a movie set, a town of moving, repeating stills: repeated rows of paintings; repeating storefronts. It is full of movie-set tropes, like the Balance Rock Eatery servers, daily dressed in identical red sateen dancing-hall dresses; or the rainbow-colored marquee at the Strand Theater; or Marilyn […]
In Claire Sherman’s “Waterfall,” a jet of water spills from a fern-covered rock overhead into a grotto of shaded shrubbery. The stone face display a variety of surface features: jagged in the foreground, smooth along the lip where polished by the rushing water, and cubical underneath the ledge […]
Playwright Alexandra Petri, a Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard, a Washington Post columnist and a humorist (author of A Field Guide to Awkward Silences, New American Library, 2016), must have wanted to gather misery like a bouquet. So she gives us — and in some ways it seems […]
One thing that can probably be said with relative certainty about part-time Utah resident and full-time artist Cara Despain is that she’s not in it for the money. Nothing in her current outing at the Kimball in Park City says “Collectable.” Even the show’s “hood ornament” — […]
Brian Boulton is a man with the courage of his convictions. By this, I mean that, having chosen to work in either reclaimed or man-made materials and to produce non-representational sculpture, he’s resisted the temptation to slip in the occasional pretty bauble or a helpful similarity to some […]
The Invitation, held September 16-18, 2021 by SALT Dance, gave the audience cohorts a delightful and light-hearted show that used various locations throughout Kingsbury Hall as innovative performance venues. The UtahPresents and the SALT Dance team both wanted a return to having a live audience in the theater […]
The year was 2003, and the Salt Lake Gallery Association was celebrating 20 years of Gallery Stroll. In Ogden, Gallery 25, a co-op gallery which had launched in 2002, was joined by Artstop Ogden. Terra Nova opened in Provo. In Salt Lake City’s Millcreek neighborhood, Evergreen Art […]
ROBERT ARNESON’S “NOSE BRICK” DONATED TO NEHMA
Self-portraiture is recurrent theme throughout Robert Arneson’s productive career as a ceramic artist. “Nose Brick,” from 1978, is another twist on this theme—however, here the self-portrait is only of his nose, and it protrudes from the end of the brick form.
Arneson uses humor and self-deprecation to comment on a variety of things ranging from Western civilization, reverence of the artist in their own work, identity, and the complicated history of ceramics in the fine arts having historically been relegated to utilitarian, functional objects. As a standard industrialized material, Arneson was also commenting on the work of Minimalist sculptors such as Carl Andre, who in the 1970s dominated the contemporary art world with simple block forms hanging from a wall.
Arneson was born in California in 1930 and studied with ceramicists Anthony Prieto at Mills College and Peter Voulkos at the University of California, Berkeley. He was head of the ceramics department at the University of California, Davis from 1962–1991 and is considered the father of the Bay Area Funk Art movement.
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UMFA ACQUIRES WORKS BY CHIURA OBATA
Thirty-five works by Chiura Obata, one of the most significant Japanese American artists of the twentieth century, are now in the permanent collection of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) at the University of Utah—thanks to a generous gift from the Obata estate.
“We are thrilled that art lovers will have the opportunity to appreciate and study these works by our grandfather,” said Kimi Hill of the Obata family. “Because many of these artworks were created in Utah, we hope people will be inspired to learn the history of wartime incarceration and go visit the actual camp site in Delta as well as the Topaz Museum. Obata never wavered from the inspiration he found in nature and his faith in the power of creativity. The solace that Obata found in the beauty of the Utah desert landscape was profound. We appreciate UMFA for wanting to share his vision with the people of Utah.”
Obata was an influential artist and teacher notable not only for the beauty, variety, and quality of his work but also for his compelling life story as an immigrant American. He was an esteemed professor of art at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading figure in the California art scene, when World War II and a shameful chapter of American xenophobia interrupted. In 1942, Obata and his family were unjustly incarcerated, with thousands of other Americans of Japanese ancestry, at the Topaz Relocation Center in Delta, Utah. He continued to produce creative work throughout his eight months in the Utah desert and even administered an art school, where he and fellow artists provided art education.
The gift to the UMFA collection consists of drawings and watercolors Obata created from 1934 to 1943, including many he made to record his incarceration at Topaz. Obata’s depictions of life as an internee in Utah, as well as watercolors, drawings, and prints of flowers, animals, and iconic California landscapes, resonated deeply with local audiences in 2018, when a major retrospective, Chiura Obata: An American Modern, traveled to the UMFA. His work was also featured prominently in When Words Weren’t Enough: Works on Paper from Topaz, 1942–1945, the 2015 inaugural exhibition for the Topaz Museum in Delta.
Tom Alder: My Third Reason for Collecting Art
“Whenever someone asks me how I go about collecting early Utah art,” Alder wrote, “I tell them my three rules: 1) I must like the particular artwork, 2) I must admire the artist and 3) (optional) an interesting story or provenance connected to the particular work of art will strengthen my decision to purchase it.”
Those interesting stories formed the basis for Tom’s column.
Paul Heath is a graduate of the University of Utah and lives and works in Salt Lake.
“I characterize my work as “Pop-Nostalgia”. As a lifetime Salt Lake City resident, I draw inspiration from the awesome neon signs we have around us. I see my work as playful documentation, looking at objects and neighborhood niches through a lighter lens. I also paint images of older antique toys… to elicit a smile or friendly smirk. My art heroes are Andy Warhol, Red Grooms and Wayne Thiebaud.”
To discover more artists, visit our Utah Artists Directory
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