When Stephen Trimble published The Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basin in 1989, the metaphor of his title seemed almost inevitable. Sagebrush blanketed nearly half of the Great Basin, the enormous sweep of basin and range country extending from Utah across Nevada and into California […]
If you’re new to Utah’s art world, right now the work of Anna Campbell Bliss may feel like one of those odd vocabulary words you’ve only just learned and suddenly hear everywhere. Her geometric compositions, built from color and repetition and carrying a glowing, mesmeric power, have been […]
While the celebrated playwright George Bernard Shaw’s maxim, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches,” might be droll, it is not accurate. Artists Who Teach, at the Bountiful Davis Art Center through November 23, brings together ten educators whose work ranges widely in medium and subject, while […]
As a child, Liza Doran fell in love with the souks of Arabia. As a young woman, she fell for the textile traditions of Belgium. Then she was seduced by photographs of a beat-up stone building in Bluff, Utah. For the next 40 years, she learned what […]
An old, turquoise-legged ironing board topped with a plank of unfinished wood stands in the middle of Finch Lane’s West Gallery. On it are five oval platters, their rims crimped like pie crusts, their centers glazed white, soft gray and pale blue. One carries a ladder-like motif drawn […]
“We focus on the Spirit of the West,” says Shalee Cooper, gallery director and curator of Under Open Skies, a group exhibition of contemporary landscape art at Modern West Fine Art through November 6. “We really support established and emerging artists.” Demonstrating an abundance of creativity across painting, […]
When we last checked in with Utah Poet Laureate Lisa Bickmore’s mobile micro-press, the project had published 19 chapbooks. That number has nearly doubled. Bickmore conceived Moon in the Rye as her signature project as Utah Poet Laureate, working directly with writers to develop small editions of […]
SALT LAKE CITY NAMES JOEL LONG ITS FIRST POET LAUREATE Salt Lake City has named Joel Long its first Poet Laureate, establishing a new civic position intended to bring poetry into public spaces and city events. Long, selected through a competitive review by literary professionals, educators and community […]
Looms sit threaded and incomplete, the shuttles hanging in a cross overhead. Threads drape off cacti and railings and a nearby tree; shirts hang as if in your closet, runners and shawls ready for an evening with family at the dining room table. Shawls hang like ancestors on […]
Among the countless artists I met in the 1970s and ’80s who employed glass as a primary medium, “stained plastic” was about as derogatory a term as was likely to be heard. Stained glass is conventionally handmade from materials of the highest quality, incorporating both accidental and intentional […]
Trent Alvey has been around for a bit. When she first appeared in the pages of 15 Bytes in 2003, she was already an established artist. (But if you’ve known Alvey long enough, you can imagine her interjecting: an artist should never be established, she would say. […]
In a 2006 interview, Robert Enright described the works of contemporary painter Peter Doig as being “fixed in a sort of drift,” embodying a seemingly contradictory in-between zone that holds tightly to both stasis and movement. Carried into the current exhibition at ‘A’ Gallery is this same tension, […]
Imagine if Salt Lake City gave $4.4 million in artist grants every year. And if you really want to get crazy, imagine all of it going to just two artists. A pipe dream, certainly. But on a per-capita basis, that’s roughly what happens in Boulder, Utah. For the […]
I was just a few chapters into my reading of Eli McCann’s debut novel, Stitched, when I paused and asked myself, “I wonder if my mother would like this book?” I often pass on what I’ve read to my mother. Though only about one in seven pass the […]
A few days before his wife, Lori, died, Russell Wrankle applied for Family and Medical Leave from his teaching position at Southern Utah University. Emergency room visits had become too frequent for him to continue teaching, though the couple still hoped a new drug might extend her life. […]
Any good interior has a piano. Or so Brian Kershisnik seems to think. We recently noticed just how often one turns up in his paintings: uprights tucked against walls, keyboards anchoring domestic scenes, instruments waiting to be played (see the work at David Ericson through Oct. 10). Maybe […]
“I saw my darkness, I saw my light, I saw everything in between, and now I’m a new human being,” says Aziza Abdieva. “I’m a Phoenix rising.” Fear is a darkness that is hard to climb out of, but Abdieva has made her artistic career by welcoming it. […]
The warm, inviting style of 1930s Spanish Colonial architecture is one of many elements that makes the Springville Museum of Art distinctive. The focus on Utah artists, on the surrounding community, and on educational outreach—all critical to the museum’s mission and history—are others. But it’s the people that […]
When the Salt Lake Bees pulled up stakes and left for Daybreak after the 2024 season, they ended roughly a century of professional baseball around the corner of 1300 South and West Temple. The team’s owners found what they were looking for farther south—room for a new stadium […]
Stewart Seidman creates expressive acrylic works on canvas and with recycled FedEx envelopes that once served as his paint palettes, transforming everyday materials into compelling contemporary art.
To discover more artists, visit our Utah Artists Directory
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