For all its cranes, new apartments, and redevelopment buzz, the Granary District has always been a place of odds and ends: empty lots the size of moonscapes, century-old warehouses slouching against cinderblock additions, and industrial streets that still bear the ghosts of rail lines. It’s a neighborhood defined […]
The April offerings at downtown Provo’s Compass Gallery represent well their mission of celebrating symbolism, storytelling, and spirituality. With three one-person shows and a group exhibition all together in the space, the art covers the gamut of spiritual and symbolic representations. In The Greatest Act of Love, numerous […]
The late folk singer and labor activist Utah Phillips liked to quote his crony Idaho Blackie, who claimed that voting couldn’t change anything, as evidence for which he claimed that if it could, it would be illegal. What neither man could have anticipated was the extensive contrary evidence […]
You don’t pay taxes on unfinished homes. That may not be the only reason so many houses in the community of Colorado City-Hildale went unfinished, but it is what first drew Jim Mangan to the place. Known for his work across the American West—particularly in Utah and Colorado, […]
For centuries, an essential division of labor ruled over humanity’s closest animal companions. There were those humans kept for work alone: farm animals, useful creatures, those we domesticated but didn’t exactly tame. Those we ate. And then there were the dogs, which still had assigned labors, such as […]
In the three years since opening Salt Lake Pottery Studio, Madison Maria has seen her life change as quickly as her business. “I was engaged when I opened, married, divorced last year,” she says, describing a period marked by “constant change, with life and business and the economy.” […]
As the water of the Great Salt Lake disappears, exposing an arsenic-filled lakebed, the once straightforward name “Salt Lake City” has become an emblem of lives that are vulnerable as the landscape shifts, and what we could lose if we don’t take action. The lake has shaped life […]
Josanne Glass and Paul Vincent Bernard’s works are nestled among each other on the walls of Phillips Gallery this month, bringing out their best qualities through contrast. Bernard’s anxious, restless line moves between attentive examinations of the landscape and, at times, darker glimpses of a world under strain, […]
Kara Komarnitsky met with Molly Heller and Jorge Rojas after the opening of their co-curated gallery, Grief Work. They talked about the emotional experience of the opening reception, the vulnerability of the curation process, and the joys of being in community when surrounded by grief. Kara Komarnitsky What […]
Construction is underway on the Larry H. & Gail Miller Arts Center, a new regional venue set to expand arts access in Salt Lake County’s southwest valley. A March 19 groundbreaking in Downtown Daybreak brought together civic leaders, arts advocates, and community members to mark the start of […]
Cedar City was always an improbable place. If it hadn’t been for the iron ore deposits in the hills nearby—deposits that Brigham Young wanted to exploit for the fledgling Utah Territory—Mormon settlers might never have come to this particular stretch of the high desert at all. As recent […]
This month, David Ericson Fine Art once again presents two artists whose differing styles highlight the breadth of contrast encompassed by today’s art. While a former professor like me wants to see this as a teaching opportunity, Dave Ericson insists that the arrangement is practical. Alternating the still-life […]
Anyone paying attention to news from the world of art, or for that matter, anyone seeking to avoid news of our nation’s reckless and self-destructive adventures on the world’s stage, may have heard about the revelation that Banksy, surely the most popular artist of our time, is primarily […]
Light is doing a lot of work in Gwen Davis-Barrios‘ exhibit at Border and Square. And it’s not the flattering kind. Headlights, streetlamps, the ambient glow of a building—her scenes are lit the way the world is at certain hours. Partial light. Temporary light. The kind that picks […]
The exhibition of John Hafen’s work at the Springville Museum of Art is quietly beautiful: pastoral landscapes float in soft tonal harmonies; fields, trees, and distant hills seem to belong to a quieter century. The paintings are assured and accomplished, the work of an artist clearly in command […]
Artists often enter school with raw talent and leave with newly sharpened skills, expected to begin careers—sometimes before they’ve lived long enough to know what they want to say. That possibility nagged at Ben Childress. After a year at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, he […]
Sometimes your neighbor is just lazy. Halloween ends, the pumpkins collapse, and a plastic skeleton is forgotten in the yard. But take a closer look, because sometimes something else may be going on. In the Liberty Wells neighborhood of Salt Lake City, a skeleton family has settled into […]
For years, Jenna von Benedikt painted wherever she could find room—on the kitchen counter, at the table, between preparing lunch and dinner as four young children raced through the house at the speed of light. She carved out creative time in fragments. “Was it an hour? Was it […]
When the painter John Sproul lost a beloved friend, he found a way to visually represent both the other man’s presence in life and the intensely personal experience of his loss. He produced at least 30 images in this innovative visual language, expressing both “emotional turbulence and its […]
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