Josanne Glass and Paul Vincent Bernard’s works are nestled among each other on the walls of Phillips Gallery this month, bringing out their best qualities through contrast. Bernard’s anxious, restless line moves between attentive examinations of the landscape and, at times, darker glimpses of a world under strain, […]
Maureen O’Hara Ure’s work has long felt like a private language, built from fragments of art history, accumulated marks, and creatures that seem to emerge from some half-remembered medieval imagination. This makes her paintings immediately recognizable, and if you’ve followed her work over the years—especially her solo exhibition […]
One of the disappointments at the semiannual Poor Yorick Open Studios is the absence of James Charles. He occupies prime real estate at the crease in Poor Yorick’s B-wing, operating out of a large, enclosed space that you can catch glimpses of in our video profile of the […]
In her newest body of work, Meri DeCaria turns inward, translating grief and renewal into color, rhythm, and form. Created in the wake of her husband Mark’s passing in 2021, the series represents an introspective exploration of what she calls “a reflection of my new reality.” “These pieces […]
I have friends who deny themselves the pleasures of visiting a gallery, so determined are they to avoid the wall signs that they interpret as telling them how to look at the art, how to interpret it, and how to respond. They’re equally determined not to read the […]
Given all of the counter-productive and even at times anti-social uses that social media have been put to, it’s easy to wonder if the Internet and its offspring are worth the cost in technology, energy, and time they consume. So it’s good to know that there are whole […]
At Phillips Gallery, as part of the NCECA Conference, Strike While the Iron is Hot showcases the work of Utah State University graduate students and faculty members, offering a dynamic and cohesive exploration of clay as both a functional medium and sculptural language. The exhibition is a testament […]
“As a sculptor, my concern is for form,” Larry Elsner wrote in 1977, “a maddening search for the unity of space and mass.” An Idaho native and longtime Utah State University (USU) professor, Elsner would always choose form over function, regardless of the medium in which he was […]
“I heard him say, ‘The bigger the brush the bigger the rush.’ ” John Erickson presents the statement for his current show at Phillips Gallery as a conversation between his family cats, Emmaline and Cecily. Speaking of the artist’s creative struggles as they witnessed them from underfoot—endeavors that […]
Regular visitors to Phillips Gallery will be familiar with the work of Mark Knudsen, whose paintings of what he has called “the new West” have been a regular presence in its exhibitions for several years. Knudsen’s style—rooted in his years as a designer and illustrator for The Salt […]
How long does Connie Borup tinker with her drawing, shifting and rearranging it, erasing and starting over? Or is it possible that she is lucky enough to find these graceful, elegant lines already composed by nature’s calligraphy? Borup’s recent work, currently on display at Phillips Gallery, continues her […]
All over the world, the story of art begins with Nature: for example, through images of living creatures painted on exposed rock faces. Later, when we moved indoors, art brought the natural world along, to complete a dwelling’s interior space. Artists can preserve the ephemeral, as Connie Borup […]
At first glance, it seems the key to poignant feeling in art is simplicity. Surely Randee Levine’s “Empty Vessels,” one of 18 mixed-media impressions now at Phillips, could hardly be more simple or more striking. Two monochrome items of tableware, perhaps a cruet and a small bowl or […]
The water cycle—traditionally how seawater loses its salt as it evaporates from the ocean, falls as rain on the land, and returns to the sea in rivers—is getting a new level of attention under the pressure of climate change. Hydrologists, the experts on this process, are taking the […]
A visitor to Phillips Gallery during what are becoming their annual showings of the art of Melinda and Joseph Ostraff (see last year’s here) might initially have the impression that the artists work in two formats. One, the more common by far this year, is about the size […]
The main gallery at Phillips is large enough to allow viewing a painting from a moderate distance, a point of view where one current work presents as a charming landscape, featuring a cottage beneath two large trees that resemble tulips. On a clothesline from one of the trees […]
If the only John Wood painting in the gallery was “Shared Experience,” a casual viewer could be excused for thinking him a landscape painter in the Impressionist School. This panel, which is almost twice as wide as it is tall, seems to show a body of water, a […]
The wind was howling, but people were talking about the art, not the weather, at Maureen O’Hara Ure’s packed opening on Friday evening at Phillips, her longtime gallery, where she’s presenting the second set of mixed-media panels she began with on-site sketches while traveling through Spain in 2022 […]
There is one portrait figure by Irene Rampton that stands out at Phillips Gallery. “Mom and Me Out On the Town” differs in the way it observes not the unique look of a sole figure, but includes two women who are as noteworthy for their similarities as for […]
