Friday night Utah Arts & Museums opened their 2013 Statewide Annual at the Rio Gallery, featuring mixed media and works on paper.

Juried by Simon Zalkind, an independent curator from Denver, Colorado, and Lisa Tamiris Becker, Director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the exhibit features 84 works by 57 artists (selected from a total of 400 works by 210 artists).  Zalkind wrote of the works submitted:

Artists who live and work in Utah accept their relative isolation from the major urban centers where the contemporary art-world buzzes and thrives. This can be, as the works in this exhibition demonstrate, a good thing. The artists whose work I had the pleasure to encounter don’t appear to acknowledge any urgency to conform to a particular market’s expectations but rather have evolved within themselves, incorporating the assumptions of international modernism but also developing wonderfully original and eccentric voices—idiosyncratic winks of local character that pop up all over the place.

For the awards of the annual competition, Becker and Zalkind chose the following works:

Utah 2013: Mixed Media & Works on Paper is at the Rio Gallery in Salt Lake City through November 22.

Ever wonder what happens behind the scenes when a show like the Statewide Annual is juried? A video produced by Utah Arts & Museums reveals a bit behind the jury process:

To delve more behind the process of juried exhibitions, join us for our November Professional Development Workshops, produced in conjunction with the Salt Lake Arts Council, where we’ll address:

What it takes to be a festival artist.
The mysteries behind the jurying process.
How to photograph your artwork at home to highlight your talent.

It happens Saturday, November 16th. You can learn more and register at www.slcgov.com/arts/workshops

15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.