When Phyllis Forsey left for New York City in 1957, she was not headed for The Art Students League like some of her Utah peers. She took a more circuitous route to a painting career. Forsey had just finished her freshman year at BYU, where she had taken […]
“The photograph that we experience is not always the photograph that we see,” writes Joe Marotta on paper tacked to a wall of his show at Gittins Gallery. “I can look at a photograph I’ve looked at a dozen times and come up with a different story.” And […]
Exchange Place Mural February 2018. A series of buildings on the northeast corner of Exchange Place and State Street, including the home of The Heavy Metal Shop, has served as one of the city’s biggest street murals for over a decade. The mural has more or less been in […]
Valentine’s Day seems to find its way into all fields of interest throughout the month of February: the themes of love and relationships, with their symbols of bright red and pink hearts and flowers, decorate homes, stores, and offices, in celebration of the season. Becoming a part of […]
Brian Kershisnik is one of Utah’s best-loved and most-respected artists, and his paintings, whether mural size or off the easel, are in private and public collections from Logan to St. George. He was given the Governor’s Mansion Award in 2010, was selected in 2014 as one of the […]
As someone who studies and writes about Contemporary art, I have often pointed out its tendency to be overly specific. There’s a real difference between Theodore Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” (1819), protesting a single event that scandalized Europe, and a porcelain figure of Michael Jackson by Jeff […]
Since 2015, Rock Canyon Poets in Provo has proven to be a community hub for poets to “promote the disciplined study of writing poetry as a serious art form.” With a little more than 50 members born out of a group of close friends from Utah Valley University’s […]
By unanimous vote, the Logan City School District Board of Education finalized the sale of 10 paintings in the district’s collection purchased with the milk money of elementary students in the 1930s that became worth a good deal: in this instance $435,061. The initial purchase was organized by […]
Because things went bad in China, Utah gets Luminaria. Brainchild of David Hyams and Christine Baczek, the state’s first alternative photography studio opened in Salt Lake City in February, after what one could call research and development work in mainland China. “We are a one-stop shop for all […]
Lydia Gravis, an artist who lives and works in Ogden, where she’s gallery director of the Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery at Weber State University, earned her MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Boston. The artist she loves, Julie Mehretu, a native of Ethiopia, […]
Printmaker and artist Martin Blundell, whose son, photographer Simon Blundell, is profiled in February’s edition of 15 Bytes, studied at the U under Robert Kleinschmidt during the mid-70s and is well known for his mixed-media drawings and paintings. He and two partners just sold SDI, a large Salt […]
The work of local artists who find inspiration in and celebrate the natural splendor of their surroundings has found a place in the Midway Art Gallery, which opened to the public on Jan. 26 – 27. A group from diverse backgrounds and trainings, these artists share appreciation for […]
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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