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If you've been to Salt Lake City's Gallery Stroll recently, you'll know that the Broadway Art Block (between about 150 East and 350 East) has become a vibrant and exciting part of the downtown tapestry. With galleries, bookstores, record stores, fashion boutiques, antiques, coffee shops and more, the strip of one-story retail shops remains one of the city's last bastions for local commerce and a magnet for the curious consumer.
Those consumers include plenty of hipsters and young singles, but the retailers welcome Salt Lake's families as well. To prove the point, this Saturday, May 31 from 11 am to 5 pm they are putting on a Children's Fair.
Sponsored by Saans Photography, Frosty Darling, Boku Massage, Ken Sanders Rare Books, and Kayo Gallery, the Children's Fair will feature:
~~Story Time~
~Magic Show~
~Toy Pony Rides~
~Balloon Artist~
~Dance Performers~
~Face Painting~
~Arts and Crafts~~
Children's Clothing~
~Free Portrait Sitting~
~Chair Massages for Parents
Join your neighbors at the Childrens' Fair at 173 and 177 East Broadway, SLC on Saturday, May 31, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For more information, call: 801-328-8827
When we sat down at our local coffee shop to talk to next month’s featured artist, Amanda Moore, one topic we had to discuss was the challenge that faces artists who use a camera instead of a brush or chisel in their work. After all, photographic artists like Moore use one of the more useful and adaptable of human inventions, which we tend to view in monolithic terms: as if every photograph is essentially the same kind of object as every other. There is probably no human activity that can’t be, or isn’t photographed, and the utter versatility and inclusiveness of the photographic record—the way it reduces absolutely every human experience to a pictorial event—can lead to the mistake of thinking that the objects that carry off this trick can all be judged by the same set of rules. But of course they can’t, and woe to the would-be lens jockey who thinks they can. A jailhouse portrait will not be welcome at a wedding, nor a snapshot fill the bill in a scientific journal. For once, the reverse is equally so; the truth is that photographic standards are not linear, and what wins the Pulitzer Prize can’t sell the product, while what accompanies your single’s ad won’t get you on the airplane.
For Amanda Moore, questions about art don’t cease to matter when she steps out from behind the viewfinder. Avidly interested in and fiercely opinionated about a whole range of arts—and not only in today’s practitioners, but in their histories as well—she brings knowledge and ideas together with practical experience. In an essay she wrote recently, to be published in our July edition, Moore explores how she feels when friends or strangers hand her a camera and ask her to take their picture. Sure enough, before we were done talking someone from a quartet seated on a nearby curb fulfilled Moore’s prophecy by politely handing her a camera and asking her to “take our picture.” With a gracious smile she rose to oblige, in passing shooting us a complex glance that asked: “Didn’t I tell you? Now do you see?”
-- Geoff Wichert
American Artist Magazine will feature Salt Lake City-based pastel artist Colleen K. Howe with the cover story of its July/August 2008 edition as well as the lead article on MyAmericanArtist.com. Howe's "Zion Overlook," a 24-by-30-inch pastel painting, is the cover image with an accompanying eight-page article titled "Four Steps to a Stronger Painting." 
Unmonumental: the object in the 21st century
reviewed by Geoff Wichert
is simultaneously the name of a book, a pioneering exhibition at the New Museum’s new home in the Bowery for which it functions as catalog, and a school of sculpture that the book argues is the leading edge of art right now. According to comments by Utah artists whose own aesthetic impulses, not surprisingly, are nothing like what’s on display in this book, “unmonumental” is an idea we will all need to become acquainted with. Whether or not you liked Cubism in 1912, Dada in 1922, or Surrealism in 1932, their influence on art everywhere made at least a passing acquaintance with them essential credentials for anyone seriously interested in contemporary culture. Comprehending Unmonumentalism is likely to prove equally indispensable to us today. Unmonumental, with essays that by turn demonstrate its principles and offer unusually lucid explanations of them, could be the essential introduction for those wishing to understand what this seismic shift in modern art is all about.
In our September 2007 edition, we learned that (then mayoral candidate) Ralph Becker is a fan of Jim Jones and H.L.A. Culmer and that he believes "we need to be continually promoting the great Utah art we have;" now, thanks to the Utah Cultural Alliance's May Culture Bytes, the community has the chance to learn about Mayor Ralph Becker's vision for the arts.
Photography 2.0: an essay by Jackie Brethen Leishman
on the occasion of Pixelism, an exhibition of works by Brett Sykes at the Thanksgiving Point Art Institute
Photography is often overlooked in the discussion of fine art. Only recently have some photographs demanded the high prices/notoriety the other art forms have enjoyed for so long. Some would argue that photography is not at the same level of painting or sculpture because everyone can take a picture; cameras are so accessible. I would argue so is painting, drawing, and sculpture. Anyone can place paint on a canvas, a pen on paper, mold clay into an object, but is it good? Does it speak a visual language, does it convey a thought, feeling or emotion using the materials at hand? Most often it does not. Photography is no different. Almost anyone can take an image, but how many people actually make an image? There is a subtle difference in the wording but a large chasm between them when it comes to comparing a work of art from a snapshot.
In thinking about Brett Sykes’ Pixelism, the mode of using a camera phone as his artistic medium is too banal. It is too accessible to set apart his work, especially since we live in a world oversaturated with imagery. Almost everyone I meet considers him/ herself some version of a photographer. Then I find out Sykes' images are film stills taken from the television. He has considered consumption, pop culture and technology and I am intrigued. Then I see his images and they are beautiful. It is in the looking, or rather the seeing of his work when I realize he is using this everyday technology and elevating the product of this technology to fine
art and it is fantastic.
Geneva Steel, in Vineyard, Utah, opened in the 1940s to mill steel for use in WW2 war ships. It slowly declined after its heyday, despite efforts by local businessmen to keep it running and profitable. Chris Dunker was initially granted permission to photograph Geneva Steel in exchange for taking portraits of the corporate bigwigs. He started documenting the place in earnest in 2004, through its closure, dismantling, and demolition in 2007. This catalog is a beautiful chronology of images, dramatizing the grand collapse of the steel industry in Utah County. “Dismantling Geneva Steel: Photographs by Chris Dunker”
117 pages
40 full color plates.
Hardcover
Softcover
Available at the Museum of Art store.
Artist Bepe Kafka was kind enough to send this our way:
The Orphan Works Act of 2008 is now being considered in the U.S. Congress. "Orphan Works" are any copyrighted work whose author any infringer says he is unable to locate with what the infringer himself decides has been a "reasonably diligent search." In a radical departure from existing copyright law and business practice, the U.S. Copyright Office has proposed that Congress grant such infringers freedom to ignore the rights of the author and use the work for any purpose, including commercial usage. This act would limit the copyright owner's ability to recover financial damages from the infringer.
To read more about this bill, go to: http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/bills/?billid=11320236
We encourage you to contact your legislators regarding this law. You can find a sample letter at: http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11303956. Please be sure to alter at least a few words in your own letter or your letter may be filtered out by legislative assistants.
We encourage artists to maintain a website as a way to keep their artwork reasonably free from being orphaned.
The Salt Lake Art Center announced this week that their search for a new executive director (see February edition) is at an end. Heather Ferrell, who has most recently served as the Executive Director and Curator of the Salina Art Center in Salina, Kansas, has accepted the position and will assume the directorship at the end of July.The May 2008 edition of 15 Bytes, chock full of the written, spoken and videotaped word on the visual arts in Utah (not to mention a whole lot of visuals) is now online.
If you've got comments on this month's edition, please share them with us by leaving a comment (see the link below) to this post.
Gavin Sheehan, another perceptive journalist, recently interviewed 15 Bytes editor Shawn Rossiter. A Logan native, Gavin is a writer/actor who works in the control room at KUTV Channel 2 in Salt Lake. He also maintains a blog on their site called Gavin's Underground.
Gavin lives in downtown Salt Lake and his blog is an "alternative view of Salt Lake City." If you've seen those photos of the destruction of the 337 Project shot from above, those are one of Gavin's views -- from his apartment, next door. Gavin's blog format is generally interview style and covers the gamut of hip things in the city: local bands, comic books, poker tournaments, food, new media and the visual arts all have appeared in recent blog entries. Within the visual arts, Gavin has interviewed Erin Berrett (whose studio was featured in our April edition), Shilo Jackson at Kayo Gallery, Brad Slaugh and Adam Price of the 337 Project.
And of course, 15 Bytes' own Shawn Rossiter. You'll find the interview here: http://community.kutv.com/blogs/games/archive/2008/04/30/2958664.aspx Those of you who were around for our Spring 2007 fundraiser will remember the photo featured there from one of our pleas for money. We're happy to report that our editor has taken a shower, gotten a shave and haircut and has a full belly. But that doesn't mean we won't shortly be hitting you up for funds. Just that maybe we'll do it with a little more style. Maybe.
