While discussion of a book often begins with a quotation, talking about art more often requires a description. The graphic art of Nancy Steele-Makasci, which grabs viewers by their eyes but speaks to them as well through the written word, requires both. A stark, high-contrast face with large, […]
Newest of all in Anna Pottier’s art-world is her studio, just built in the backyard of her home in West Valley City. The 12 x 16-foot purpose-built space replaces a derelict 40 x 22-foot chicken coop/horse stable. It contained pale turquoise and peacock blue woodwork dating from at […]
Memories of a Future Life, her current exhibit at Provo’s Writ & Vision, is only one of several projects Paola Bidinelli is birthing (or rebirthing) in 2022. The exhibit, a series of sculptural and relief works that uses natural found materials like stones, branches, nutshells and bark, reflects […]
In late 2021, Cara Jean Hall joined the team at Salt Lake City’s Art Access as their Communications and Digital Marketing Manager. After spending the first 15 years of her adult life raising four children, Hall had received her BA from the University of Houston before beginning her […]
Pushing back a black curtain, you enter a small room where your ears are met by women’s voices singing the words to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Overlapping these vocals is the sound of a gunshot hitting metal. At the same time, you notice, in the […]
In the first picture, the subject appears relaxed, reclining sideways on an upholstered chair, arms and legs uncrossed. He wears blue jeans and a stylishly casual, two-tone jacket with a vertical zippered pocket. He sports a paisley bow tie and a hip set: mustache and soul spot. In […]
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.
You felt your car was honorary among elephants, that you were where a Thai dignitary or king or queen would be, or, surely, had been: while an elephant mural was still there, at the restaurant on State street in Salt Lake City called Thai Siam. Once, when it […]
Brigham Young University professor Patrick Madden has won the 15 Bytes Book Award for Creative Nonfiction for his collection of essays. Published by the University of Nebraska Press, Disparates confirms Madden’s reputation as an essayist of great humor, vitality and range. In one of the essays collected here, […]
Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner’s evocative, disturbing, dark novel, The Contortionists, has won this year’s 15 Bytes Book Award for fiction. The novel, which the author has described as a “literary crossover,” injects the tension of a suspense novel into the world of fully fleshed characters, deep context and […]
“Three vaccinations and four negative tests later, I still feel as if I am sneaking around like a thief to Home Depot, the studio, going to the river to walk the dogs and increasing my list of Life Birds,” says Bernard, referring to the birder’s count of specifies identified in the wild. “160 birds at this point.”
In Sweet Hearts, Melanie Rae Thon has written the most complex and challenging book … Complex because she has densely stitched together five generations of the lives of the families she created, but also woven them into more than a century of eventful and unsettling Western history. And challenging not only because this is a history of relentless exploitation, marked by misadventure, injustice, and cruelty, but also because she refuses to shield herself or her readers from the true horror of the continuing conflict between the Native Americans who were driven from their lands again and again, and the interlopers from the east who always found, and continue to find, reasons why they still want to take for themselves even the desolate places they forced those defeated communities to take on.
“It has been very quiet in the halls here at Poor Yorick Studios,” says Salt Lake City artist Lisa McAfee. Originally from the California coast, McAfee earned her BFA from California State, Long Beach, before coming to Utah. She works with painting, printmaking and mixed media to depict “expansive landscapes, objects, and animals integrated with personal symbolism.”
Mike Jensen says he has used positive affirmation statements to help guide him through 2021. “It has been a year of introspection and growth. With everything going on in the world, and all of the isolation, my fear was that I would struggle. Fortunately, I’ve learned to thrive … and I have created more artwork than any other year.”
Colorful. Full of life and energy. Radiant. Joyous. An explosion of color into form. All words and phrases that describe Untamed, the new body of work by Nicholas Wilton at Julie Nester Gallery in Park City. But walking into the gallery, surrounded by so many large and busy […]
UMFA’S KATIE SEASTRAND NAMED UTAH’ TOP MUSEUM EDUCATOR
Katie Seastrand, manager of school and teacher programs at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) at the University of Utah, has been named Utah Museum Educator of the Year. Seastrand received the award Saturday, March 26, at the Utah Art Education Association (UAEA)’s Spring Conference held online.
“Katie does excellent work to connect K-12 students and teachers to the diverse world of art and creativity,” said Annie Burbidge Ream, co-director of learning and engagement at UMFA. “We truly are so grateful to get to work and learn alongside her, and we look forward to seeing all of the wonderful ways she will continue to enrich people’s lives through engaging art experiences.”
Hired in September 2019 to travel and teach in K-12 classrooms throughout Utah, Seastrand completely re-envisioned school outreach after COVID made in-person Museum tours and classroom visits impossible. Looking for new ways to safely support teachers and students, Seastrand focused first on immediate needs. She worked with classroom teachers and her colleagues in UMFA Learning and Engagement to develop and distribute 1,500 “Art Kits” of supplies to Salt Lake area schools and to Whitehorse High School in San Juan County. She then reimagined and expanded UMFA’s relatively new distance learning efforts into five new programs that have brought UMFA artworks and art-inspired experiences into classrooms virtually.
In two and a half years—most of that time under COVID restrictions—Seastrand has worked with more than 6,000 students and 550 teachers statewide to connect classroom core subjects to UMFA’s global art collection. These programs help students and teachers make connections between objects and their own lived experience, and they give underserved populations some of their only opportunities to experience the visual arts.
“Using art in classrooms not only provides opportunities for students to learn on their own terms but can also help with stress and social-emotional learning,” Seastrand said. “Students need room to be free and creative, to bring what they want to the paper, canvas, clay, or other medium. Art education is an empowering space and outlet for whatever emotions, anxieties, or experiences that may not easily be expressed through words.”
Seastrand grew up in Salt Lake City and graduated from Olympus High School. She has a bachelor’s degree in art history and curatorial studies from Brigham Young University and a master’s degree in museum education from George Washington University. While in graduate school, she interned at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Abracadabra Preschool in Alexandria, Virginia, before returning to Salt Lake City and joining the UMFA.
Baldwin Radio Company and the Flynn Artipelago
And if you’re an artist and want a booth at the centennial celebration this August, visit our Opportunities section.
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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