In the foreground of a tall, slender watercolor a luminous yellow oval on the roof of a wet-looking car identifies it as a Taxi. This spot of color is echoed by the light from four narrow windows in the somber, gray structure that lines the street behind it. […]
Sometimes a gallery shows two artists simply because that’s who they have. There’s nothing wrong with that. Or they may have discovered an unknown pair: two deep excavators, say, who are mining the same subject matter. Some artists prefer to show with their friends. Again, nothing wrong there. […]
When Briana Dolan and Kevin O’Keefe opened the doors of the Mountain America Exposition Center in Sandy on May 14th, they were testing a thesis. Salt Lake City, they had argued for the better part of a year, was ready for a serious, national-caliber fine art fair. The […]
When Ann Poore wrote about Clubhouse on South Temple for 15 Bytes in early 2017, the ink was barely dry on the deed. Dave Brewer and Jessie Jude Gilmore, then co-owners of Photo Collective Studios, had purchased the historic Ladies’ Literary Club building had purchased the historic Ladies’ […]
Modern West Fine Arts has had three successive locations in Salt Lake City, which is an unusual number for a gallery. For those who fondly remember the days when critics told us what was good and what was bad about things, here are some relevant opinions. The first […]
When David Walker and his wife first imagined Art on Main, they were thinking about a street, not just a show. The two had run Brigham City’s Main Street Program for years and watched what the annual St. George Art Festival had done for that community—how the arts […]
Twenty years ago, 15 Bytes paid a visit to what we called one of the most unique sculpture gardens you’ll find “well, anywhere.” The Gilgal Sculpture Garden, tucked behind houses and businesses at 749 East 500 South in Salt Lake City’s Central City neighborhood, hasn’t moved. Many Salt […]
Envisioned as a 5-year long exhibition that updates the permanent American Art collection galleries, BYU Museum of Art’s latest iteration is a significant re-conceptualization not just of the collection, but of the way the institution views historical perspectives and artists’ roles in history. But instead of presenting a […]
The most commanding work at Polarized America, in the Gallery on 6th at Utah Valley University, might be Kristina Lenzi’s “Pantsuit Pattern.” Essentially an actual American flag hung on a back wall, its brilliant red, white, and blue make it strikingly visible from throughout the room, while the […]
There is a persistent myth about what it means to be a serious artist — that the work is everything, that the studio is the whole world, and that attention paid to anything outside it is a kind of compromise. Ask anyone who advises working artists about how […]
THE NOMAD’s Issue 4, “Breakthroughs,” is more about the through than the break. There are few explosive moments, not many trumpet blasts. Instead, the issue gathers fiction, memoir, lyric essay, prose poem, and poetry—fifty-four pieces by twenty-seven writers—around breakthrough as passage, as a moving through. The variety of […]
Mimi Chen Ting believed movement could be made visible. In paintings filled with looping lines, rhythmic geometries, and figures that seem to pulse across the canvas, the artist transformed dance, migration, memory, and music into visual form. In a downstairs gallery at the BYU Museum of Art, Make […]
New mural planned for Salt Lake City’s historic Japantown Salt Lake City’s historic Japantown—one of the last remaining traces of what was once a thriving Japanese American district downtown—will receive a new community-informed mural this summer. Led by the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency in partnership with […]
“Besides my children, this has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I would have done all this for free.” Lesly Allen is talking about South Salt Lake’s Mural Fest, now in its ninth year and established as Utah’s largest mural festival. She’s not being sentimental. She […]
Sugar House has been arguing about itself for more than a decade. What kind of neighborhood should it be? How tall should its buildings get? What belongs next to the park? The arguments go back to when developer Craig Mecham tore down the old retail spaces on the […]
Twenty-five years is a long time to be together. You get into rhythms. Certain habits. And then—if you’re smart—you start finding ways to keep things interesting. People will suggest things. Maybe open the relationship up a little? In the case of an online magazine, what would that mean, […]
Don Quixote had his Sancho Panza. Jo had her Laurie. George and Lennie had each other. Heck, Wilbur had his Charlotte. Throughout the canon, there is a long line of literary duos who inform their stories on a rigging of loyalty that can be stretched to its limits, […]
Before it became International Workers’ Day, before it became a bank holiday, May 1st was a festival of spring: dancing, drinking, flirtation, communal release. It was a ritual of renewal with pagan roots and Christian overlays, not wholly approved by the authorities, where villages gathered around a tall […]
Fifty is a big anniversary. Whether a golden anniversary for a couple, or a company marking half a century of endurance and adaptation. Any arts organization that reaches fifty years has something to crow about—a record of having weathered changing tastes, uncertain economies, and the thousand quiet challenges […]
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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