Artist Profile: Salt Lake
The Conscious Awakening of My Dreams
In Memoriam Tom Mulder
Losing someone is never easy, and cleaning up what they left behind can be a daunting and melancholy task. In the fall of 2008 a group of local artists at Captain Captain Studios began to talk of putting on an exhibition for one of their colleagues, who was dying of colon cancer; they wanted to do something to show their respect for their studio mate, Tom Mulder and hoped to display his works. Mulder died before the idea could come to fruition, and what they hoped to do with his help and assistance they are now doing on their own. Going through a packed artist studio and two storage units, with over 500 paintings, they are selecting works to be exhibited at the Rio Gallery this month.
Gallery Spotlight
Pop Shops: Change is Good
by Tiffini Porter Widlansky
What is Pop Shops? The answer is not entirely clear, and that is, essentially, the point.
Its creators call it an exploration of “the relationship between fine art, social activity, and retail consumerism in a temporary, constantly transforming space,” adding that there are “no preconceptions about what it may (or may not) turn into.” In other words, it’s an experiment, and its most salient characteristic is impermanence.
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Exhibition Review: Provo
Plastic Poetry
Dan Steinhilber at BYU's Museum of Art
by Shawn Rossiter
Where other artists study the qualities of clay and paint, Dan Steinhilber spends his time in the local home supply store, exploring the properties and artistic possibilities of polyurehtanes and pvc piping. As can be seen at the exhibit of his works currently at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, this Washington D.C.-based artist uses everyday materials to make poetry out of plastic by evoking the natural with the man-made.
In his works, which reside on a slippery scale of installation-sculpture-painting, Steinhilber employs store-bought materials, pushing but not altering their forms, so that at the end of an exhibit most of his materials can either be recycled or returned to the store. The materials are crass and mundane, but Steinhilber employs them with the sensitivity of a nature poet, concentrating on the unique qualities of the man-made materials at his diposal to search after a mimetic art that engages the natural world. In his hands, PVC pipe becomes a spider web, packing peanuts the crashing surf, and flourescent bulbs a shimmering cascade of water.
These works, all untitled, were created specifically for the BYU exhibit and were installed by the artist in the month of November. Some are tagged with two dates, an earlier date for the first realization of an idea -- such as suspending dry cleaning hangers from each other to create a floating sculpture -- and 2008 for its current incarnation. Though the exhibition takes place on the museum's lower level, in rooms designed specifically for this exhibit, Steinhilber's works spread across other available spaces in the museum like a natural growth. The recent ideation of the hanger sculpture hangs supsended above the front entrance; a series of bent and bruised 2-liter Mountain Dew bottles, resembling an infestation of snails, occupy space at the south windows. A related work stands inconspicuosly at the gift-shop entrance, fooling patrons who try to purchase the products, oblivious to the fact that a bottle of (caffeine-free) Coca-Cola is filled with orange soda and the Sprite is caramel colored.
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