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 more than a decade, to when developer Craig Mecham tore down the old […]
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 […]
“I don’t want my kids to do my legacy,” says Greggory Wood. “I’m hoping my kids will think well enough of me that they’ll think I’ve given them enough tools to live their life—but not live their life like I think they should live it.” It’s a statement […]
There’s a wisecrack by Ad Reinhardt (or some say Barnett Newman) that a sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to get a better look at a painting. That notwithstanding, having the two media share a gallery can be an effective use of space. One […]
Each year since 1924, the Springville Museum of Art has hosted a contemporary art competition called the Spring Salon. Artists from around the country, including John Carlsen, Norman Rockwell, Emile Gruppe, and Maynard Dixon have participated. The contest still receives submissions from all over; but, the majority are […]
In celebration of National Poetry Month, 15 Bytes is pleased to present a conversation and reading with Utah poet Shawn Dallas Stradley, interviewed by 15 Bytes editor Shawn Rossiter. In their conversation, Stradley reflects on a life spent writing—beginning in adolescence and continuing through decades of artistic and […]
For years, the Springville Museum of Art’s Spring Salon has served as a place where we at 15 Bytes both discover new artists and take stock of what those we already know are doing.The 15 Bytes Discovery Award, inaugurated this year in partnership with the Springville Museum of […]
“My paintings stem from an innate desire to express something words cannot,” says Anne Wolfer in her artist statement. The challenge to those who write about visual art may never have been more succinctly stated. Then again, the unmistakable differences between the way she represents the visible world […]
Trent Call is such a protean inventor that anyone faced with the present task might be tempted to start by recalling any number of personal favorites: the facade facing the TRAX station at Ninth South that serves as an invitation to one of the most innovative urban enclaves […]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with painting from photographs. Even artists who never, ever work from them will tell you they have no quarrel with painters who do so. Photography was invented in the 19th century by painters seeking to shorten the arduous path that leads from three-dimensional […]
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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