Whale Sculpture Gets New Mural This Fall
Jiyoun Lee-Lodge has been selected to paint a new mural on “Out of the Blue,” Stephen Kesler’s whale sculpture at the 900 South and 1100 East roundabout in the 9th & 9th neighborhood. The piece, titled Open Your Eyes, wraps the whale in a continuous 360-degree design of pink and blue gradients and wave patterns drawn from the Great Salt Lake and Utah’s skies—one whale eye painted open, the other closed. Lee-Lodge, a Korean-born, Salt Lake City-based artist, was chosen from 35 applicants through a public RFQ process that included input from more than 1,700 residents via the city’s shapeSLC platform. Painting begins in late August and continues through September; the mural debuts at Whale Fest on October 3.
Zachary Fabri Named 2026 Artist in Residence at Ogden Contemporary Arts
Brooklyn-based artist Zachary Fabri will spend eight weeks in Ogden this fall as OCA’s 2026 Artist in Residence, from August 1 through October 4. Working in video, photography, sculpture, and drawing, Fabri will focus on salt extraction in Utah — photographing the pink waters near Stansbury Island and drawing material from Compass Minerals’ evaporation ponds for a series of new sculptures fabricated with local partners. He’s tracing a line from that extraction history to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and into Black culture today, filtered partly through his own Jamaican heritage. The residency includes free public programs — a lecture at Weber State’s Kimball Visual Arts Center, a movement workshop, and a Jamaican salt cod tasting — and closes with a live performance during the October 2 opening reception.
Roxanne Gray Departs UMOCA for Faculty Role at UVU
Roxanne Gray, UMOCA’s Public Programs Strategist, is leaving the museum to become an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at Utah Valley University. During her time at UMOCA she built out the museum’s public programs, helping launch Flow Share Yoga, developing Tetrascapes with local performers and artists, and growing Fieldworks into one of the museum’s more ambitious offerings.
MIXED MEDIA
8/3 SLUGMAG: “Growth Requires Sacrifice:” Bianca Velasquez’s “Prescribed Burn”
Tucked away between Reservoir Park and the University of Utah is the charming Finch Lane Gallery. Inside, you will find artwork displayed at every corner and beautiful pieces created by local Utah artists.
With exhibitions rotating in and out of the gallery, several artists have graced Finch Lane’s walls. This month, Finch Lane is showcasing two amazing exhibitions, “IRL,” a collaboration between Brenna Cooper, Jeremiah Parkin and Lizzie Windsor, and “Prescribed Burn” by Bianca Velasquez.
“Prescribed Burn” is a brilliant and stunning exhibition. Velasquez first became inspired to work on the exhibition after watching Fire Tender by Roni Joe Draper, a film about the indigenous and matriarchal practice of cultural burns. She said the 16 pieces that make up “Prescribed Burn” explore the beauty that can emerge from destruction. “What I thought was really beautiful was the metaphor within … comparing it to the human condition of sacrifice and destruction and catastrophe in order to prevent larger fires, per se,” Velasquez says…
8/2 SLTRIB: This book from a Utah publishing house won the American Book Award
An anthology of Indigenous voices, published by Utah publishing house Torrey House Press, has won a 2026 American Book Award.
“Beyond the Glittering World” features 22 different pieces from Indigenous female, two-spirit and marginalized gender writers of varying ages — including Utah author Stacie Shannon Denetsosie — about their dreams and reimagined futures.
Denetsosie, a member of the Navajo Nation, said the honor means a lot, especially right now.
“We’re in a time where Indigenous ancestral lands are at constant risk of exploitation, extraction, and there’s so much Indigenous erasure on a lot of different levels,” she said. “The fact that they selected our book just proves to me that Indigenous futures matter more than ever.”
7/29 SLUGMAG: Artspace: Bridging the Gap Between Art and Commuity
Downtown Salt Lake City is enriched is sprawling with a culture like nowhere else. The area has expanded tremendously in the past decade, growing with it an appreciation for history, community and of course, the arts. Just within the Old Greek Town neighborhood, Artspace is continuing their practice of bringing art and community together with the reconstruction of the residential and commercial space known as Norbridge Court. As part of Artspace’s two-step renovation on their Norbridge Court, Craft Lake City invites artist Nancy Rivera to curate the Rarely Named exhibition.
Founded in 1980, Artspace began as a nonprofit dreamt up by artists who needed an affordable space to work and live. According to Artspace’s Vice President Cindy Franke, each building project mixes housing units and commercial spaces such as galleries, office spaces and retail. “Being a nonprofit, part of our mission is to demonstrate that we can build affordable housing sustainably,” Franke says. “Some are as small as 300-square feet so an individual artist can have a place to work.” Today, the nonprofit operates out of seven buildings with 278 housing units and over 125,000 square feet of commercial space.
UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Categories: Mixed Media
