Gallery Spotlight: St. George
Mixing It Up
Split Rock Gallery in St. George is a blend of the corporate and the personal
by Shawn Rossiter

Despite a housing hiccup during the first years of the recent recession, Utah's Dixie has continued to grow at a robust rate. It may not be the 50 percent growth seen in the first decade of this century (making St. George one of CNN's 10 fastest-growing cities in the U.S.), but housing developments continue to spring up along the multihued mesas and plateaus that surround St. George. In places like Ivins and Kayenta, developers are doing brisk business in second homes for the well-to-do, who are attracted by the gorgeous scenery and warm winters. Frequently these homeowners are sold a package deal, with furniture and decor to fill their brick and mortar. Which explains why a development company like Split Rock would have its own art gallery.

Conceived in 2010, Split Rock Gallery, located in St. George's Ancestor Square, first opened for the Parade of Homes in February 2011 inside what used to be a nightclub. "Apparently back then it got pretty rowdy in here," says gallery director Sheri Taylor. Things have since quieted down and now the building is home to small shops and restaurants. In Split Rock's space, wood floors replaced old carpets, and trusses were stripped down to their original wood to create an inviting space, on two floors, that looks through floor-to-ceiling glass across an atrium at another Split Rock venue, their interior design showroom.

"The partners of Split Rock Design [a division within the larger Split Rock group] have always loved art and collected art and always wanted to have a gallery," Taylor says. At conception she was invited to bring in the initial artists and create a turnkey space. When she left to work as financial director for the Dove Center, a domestic violence recovery center in St. George, she continued to consult with the gallery. Then in September of last year, Split Rock invited her to come back in an upper management position with a portfolio that includes management of the gallery.

Taylor had a peripatetic upbringing, mostly in California, moving about every three years. During her last year of high school the family moved to Richfield, in central Utah. It was a bit of cultural shock, she says, but she began falling in love with the state. She returned to California for college (majoring in accounting) and lived in Los Angeles, Israel and Belgium (where she earned a master's in business) before returning to Orange County. When her parents were looking around for a place in which to retire, Taylor lobbied for St. George. Successfully. After years of visiting, she ended up following them here. "I fell in love with the redrocks. It seeped into my bones."

An avid collector herself, Taylor is enthusiastic about her job and the ability to be surrounded by things she loves in a place she loves. While the business may be owned by a group of investors, Taylor provides what every good gallery needs, a personality. And she says she takes all responsibility for the gallery. Finding the right staff has been key to the gallery's success, she says, and they are consulted in selecting artists and artworks. Partners from the group will also suggest artists, but ultimately the decision of what and who to show is up to her.

"It's about beauty. About what speaks to me," she says about the art in the space. There are a lot of landscapes and plenty of western-themed art, but these mingle with figurative and abstract works. "This gallery is always in shift because if I weren't able to bring in elements and things I love and we love as a group, I'd be bored and our clients would be bored."

There are plenty of local artists, but she's also brought in talent from the Wasatch Front as well as outside the state. Taylor looks for artists who have a body of work, but ones who also show an evolution, a desire to expand. "Experimentation is really important," she says. "So it doesn't get stagnant."

The gallery sells a lot of work to locals, to people with second homes in the area, but they also cater to what she calls "eclectic walk-ins," people from all over the world. "We had clients in from Ohio, Germany and Israel the past couple of days," she says by way of example. Like her, they fall in love with the area and keep coming back.

The gallery does not maintain a monthly calendar of shows, but frequently sets up specific events, like their exhibit in May organized in conjunction with Zion National Park and celebrating the publication of Art of the National Parks. They also participate in Art on Main, a gallery walk event that happens every quarter. For these evenings the gallery provides live music and has an artist on hand doing live demonstrations.

There is a lot going on in St. George right now, Taylor says. "It feels like there are a lot of people getting more involved and it's exciting to see all that's happening down here." She and Split Rock Gallery are in the thick of it. Whether you're in the market for a second home, or are just in the area for a visit, Taylor's sure if you stop in you'll find something to take home.

For the Friday, October 14th Art on Main event, Split Rock Gallery will feature a demonstration by Ivins artist Ron Larsen. You can learn more about the gallery and look at their stable of artists by visiting their website.

Exhibition Review: Salt Lake City
Being Realistic About the Future of Painting
Joe Carter at Phillips Gallery
by Geoff Wichert

According to Wikipedia: The hippocampus (named after its resemblance to the seahorse, from the Greek hippos meaning “horse” and kampos meaning “sea monster”) is a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation.

Every tinkerer or handyman has one: a jar or box to save things for which no designated jar or box exists. Joe Carter has painted one in his familiar, precise manner. He calls it “Hippocampus,” and the title is as accurate as his painting of bits of wire, odd hardware, narrow glass jar, and even the taped-up sides of the box itself. Carter’s box fulfills much the same function as the hippocampus, holding odd bits for evaluation, a step on the way to permanent storage. But Carter’s analogy goes much further than that. Isn’t art the equivalent in its context of the hippocampus in the brain? Whether artists make close copies of the things they see, or the feelings they evoke, or just the signs of the times, the fundamental job of art is conservation. The sewing machine in “Family Threads” celebrates the industrial age, when machines were not just efficient, but elegant as well. And the futuristic cityscape? “Transistorville” reveals something unintended that was always there, a metaphor hidden inside that clock radio. The architect said form follows function, but the hippocampus makes other connections.

Another oil, titled “Odds and Ends,” further demonstrates the mind at work—and why no computer comes close. Canny viewers will know that this assortment of tchotchkes were chosen by Carter to make an interesting painting. But stand for a few minutes in contemplation, and possible links will soon come to mind. These over here are all figures, of which those two both look like spacemen. And that jet plane . . . doesn’t that go with Buck Rogers? Give us the images and we will make up the story. But then what of “Key”? Here my mind wants to resist the simple conclusion that he assembled this subject just to paint it. If a box can be a hippocampus, what about a book? Especially one with so many addenda saved among its bound pages.

“James Gang” captures a fundamental truth about images: each generates its own context. Toss one—the TWA promotional card—on top of another—the band’s poster—and their disparate perspectives clash. They refuse to lie down together, until the brain imposes an even larger context on both. Carter’s art straddles the wall between a viewer’s awareness of the painting and his or her interest in the subject matter. If he fails, as artists today far too often do, either the painting becomes all about the painter, or its audience looks right past the artist’s fingerprints to see the subject as though it were physically present. In the end, each Carter oscillates between the arrangement of two-dimensional information on a flat surface and an incandescent encounter with something real.

Joe Carter's new work is on exhibit at Salt Lake City's Phillips Gallery through October 11.