This week's book review originally appeared in the April 2009 edition of 15 Bytes. We are revisiting the review in conjunction with the UMFA's current exhibit, The Continuing Allure:
Painters of Utah's Red Rock, which will be covered in this month's edition of 15 Bytes
Painters of Utah's Canyons & Deserts
Reviewed by Lila Abersold
Painters of Utah’s Canyons & Deserts, a collaboration of art historians Donna L. Poulton and Vern G. Swanson, is a wonderfully written and illustrated book about artists painting the southern Utah landscape. The book is a suitable companion to other publications about Utah art and artists, the previous book entitled Painters of the Wasatch Mountains by Robert Olpin, Ann Orton and Tom Rugh.
Artists, photographers, writers, and poets were not the first to discover the canyon country of Utah’s plateau province, but they were the first to speak to the beauty and wonderment of this expanse of exposed rock, rugged land and deep canyons.
Indigenous people have used images from this region to record their experiences on the red rock surface known as petroglyphs, and to enhance their utilitarian objects of pottery, baskets, rugs and dress. The book gives reference to this early artform complementing the following text of artists giving visual image to the canyons and deserts of southern Utah.
This book is a testament to the land and places seen through the eyes of artists beginning in the 1800s and carrying through to the present. The impact of Utah’s canyons and deserts on the artists is documented through images, diaries and letters collected and sensitively presented in this publication.
The three major sections with their subcategories, cover the period from 1848 to the present. Beginning with the survey artists who accompanied exploration parties and visually recorded the unknown regions by first drawing and later painting and photographing this region of rugged and unimaginable beauty.
Part I: Utah’s Red Rock, 1848 – 1970, begins with survey artists mapping and charting the nameless wilderness to accommodate the westward expansion. Geological surveying also required a visual reference and the survey artists provided this with their sketches and drawings then translating them to lithographs. Of the early survey artists, it is Thomas Moran who turned the sketches into large oil paintings in his studio for commercial interests. The romanticized paintings were idealized images which did not meet with John Wesley Powell’s approval, “You do not once . . . give your sensations even in the most dangerous passages.”
Powell had intended to have photographers record his river expeditions and the accounts of the difficulties of transporting cumbersome photographic equipment and getting images on glass plates is a fascinating story. Photographer John (Jack) Hillers became a member of Powell’s second expedition (1871-72). Hillers photographs were the first to be viewed from the canyon floors.
Utah artists Alfred Lambourne and George Ottinger and photographer C.R. Savage had documented the area earlier in 1870. The early Utah artists began to view this southern region through the eyes of the expedition and visiting artists. These early painters found the lure of the vistas and vast, desolate spaces and deep canyons a subject for pictorial expression. Once the southern Utah region became more accessible, the artists found endless areas to depict on their canvases. The artists became intertwined with the canyons and deserts and found philosophical questions to ponder and express through their art.
Part II: Utah’s Plateau, Parks & Monuments, 1900 – Present, addresses the increasing number of artists who have acquired training from established sources in the United States and in Europe. By the turn of the 20th century, settlement and the establishment National Parks had defined the areas of the southwest region. Zion, Bryce, back country arches, natural bridges and monuments were being painted and photographed in increasing numbers. The magic and beauty of this phenomenal land appealed to the artists for their interpretation from the most literal rendering to idealized and abstracted forms.
Part III: Utah’s Continuing Allure, 1960 – Present, brings a variety of artists and art styles to the region, each expressing a unique view of the canyons and deserts and the impact of settlement and commercialization of the land.
The plateau region houses many contemporary artists working in traditional styles and techniques and many interpreting another vision of this area. The variety of styles and techniques are unique messages by artists living, visiting, painting and photographing in this region that was once so remote and inhospitable. The overwhelming effect of Utah’s canyons and deserts is such that Robert Smithson, the creator of the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake is quoted, “The landscape [of southern Utah] is so overwhelming that there is no way that I can make an impression on it.” Indeed, it is the artist’s challenge to sense the significance of the aesthetic experience.
The text for this book is informative, very well written with interesting stories of historical events and experiences that tie the artist to the visual work. The biographical information is equally enlightening complementing the colored reproductions. After all, a book about painting is not interesting without visual reference.
This book will serve as a reference to the history of artists painting in southern Utah, as well as a document that can be enjoyed and savored for a long time.
PAINTERS OF UTAH'S CANYONS AND DESERTS
Donna L. Poulton and Vern G. Swanson
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Gibbs Smith (May 2, 2009)
- ISBN-10: 142360184X
- ISBN-13: 978-1423601845
"The visitor will find a dramatic sense of invention and innovation in color palettes and styles, various and pronounced moods, and compositional structures that lean from the fantastical to the starkly realistic, and from the very refined to the highly abstract. The limitless sublime qualities of nature in southern Utah imprints each piece in this exhibit, yet the works are able to stand out as unique creations, capturing in color and form the fleeting moments of the ephemeral land. ”
Salt Lake City's inversion might endanger your health, but it sure can be beautiful. Check out Alex Haworth Johnstone new short film on "Smog Lake City" on page 6.
The bright colors and stylized subjects of Belassen’s paintings are emotionally evocative. When asked to do a series of flower paintings for a children’s hospital in Phoenix, she did seven different types of flowers that were supposed to make people happy. For her -- and she hopes for her viewers -- accuracy is not so important as the feelings evoked. “It doesn’t have to be exact, right?”
Amanda Moore inaugurates a new column on what's going in in our in our institutions of higher learning with a focus on the University of Utah: kinetic art, performance artist Ernesto Pujol, a new book by Ed Bateman, and Who Does She Think She Is?
"Step through the doors of the recently opened 15th Street Gallery, in Salt Lake’s Sugarhouse neighborhood, and you’ll immediately feel transported to New York or the chic shops of Las Vegas. Sleek, minimalist décor is present throughout, complete with track lighting and white walls, floor and ceiling. Gallery owner Glenda Bradley says, “I saw a gallery in Atlanta years ago that had white floors and walls, and I really liked the look and wanted to try it here.”
"Only three years before his death Rosenbaum finally acquired a TV, when his brother suggested that rather than carrying records all over the place he could listen to classical music on TV. When his brother visited he saw the TV had a big piece of cardboard on it. "I said, ‘What the hell’s that for?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I covered the damn screen up. I don’t want to see those idiots playing. I just want to hear the music.'. . ."
Earlier this month Simon Blundell visited the Provo studio of Ryan S. Brown and came away with a photographic essay of the artist's studio space.
"Before going to see her paintings later this month at the Evolutionary Healthcare Gallery, do this: imagine walking on a beach at sunset. The sun is so bright it takes great bites, as Georgia O’Keeffe called them, out of what it touches. Or the overwhelming volume, the glare of light reflected off wet sand, absorbs and devours mere things. Turning the other way, darkness follows, masking and melding what was clear only moments before. This, in its most visible form, is Kathryn Stedham’s subject matter. . ."
Over the years we've had repeated requests to expand 15 Bytes coverage to include arts other than the visual -- dance, music, the theatre. While much new media in the visual art world blurs the boundaries between what was once simplly the "plastic arts" and its cousins, the performing and narrative arts, 15 Bytes remains focused on Utah's visual art scene.
Supermarket produce can no longer hide behind the guise of carefully stacked bins and a shiny wax finish in Matthew Moore's Lifecycles. Crops are revealed from seed through harvest by cameras located where they grow, and the footage is later played on screens over their store displays. Moore is an Arizona farmer championing the farming practice in the face of suburban sprawl. The project collects data about the soil and sun patterns with the hopes to send out cameras to farmers across the nation. Lifecycles brings awareness to the importance of stewardship and the sense of place connected to our food sources. Being exhibited simultaneously at an actual Park City grocery store, Moore's work is launched into the realm of social activism, tying a string around shoppers' fingers so they remember to ask where that apple came from.
Christopher Renstrom is a professional astrologer who resides in Salt Lake City. His regular feature, Ask The Astrologer, appears in CATALYST magazine and he is the creator of RulingPlanets.com-- an on-line astrological magazine. You can contact Christopher for readings by writing to rulingplanets.com.
"When unemployment is on the rise and houses are threatened with foreclosure, luxuries like collecting contemporary art often take the first hit. For this reason, I asked three artists – Peter Everett, Kindra Fehr, and Russell Wrankle – the following questions . . ."
". . . each section represents an individual that Displacement is introducing us to. The effort patrons put in becomes the product of the display, a transfer of energy much like the Three Gorges project itself."
". . . Achieving human scale in the west desert is no small feat: human scale assumes a level of intimacy that no mountain or ridge in the region can grace upon us. Taking in the view from each tunnel not only frames the land from our vantage point to distances five, ten, or more miles away, the tunnel’s viewpoint serves as a human scale portal to seeing a new world."
" . . . alternatively abstract and representational, realistic and diagrammatic, impressionistic and expressionistic, detached and engaged, these paintings move back and forth as casually as truly bilingual speakers switch between shared languages, using whatever verbal gesture or linguistic brushstroke best expresses the moment’s feeling or thought.
". . . Light is the force that animates and fills every surface in Terry's paintings, giving life to the polished floors and weathered baseboards as much as to the folds of cloth and mundane objects that make up his still lifes. "
". . . The paintings Lake is working on now are angry pieces, far removed from the dainty teacups and colorful landscapes for which he is known. In a series of shocking symbolic narrative works, ones he knows will offend, he is dealing with his lifetime as a homosexual."
