Brian Snapp with his work at Finch Lane Gallery, 2016. Image by Simon Blundell.

Well my friends are all gone and my hair is grey

I ache in the places where I used to play

And I’m crazy for love, but I’m not comin on

I’m just payin my debt every day

In the Tower of Song

-Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen’s lyrics frame Brian Snapp’s reflections on artistic influence—a meditation shaped as much by gratitude as by memory. Asked to write about an artistic love, Snapp found himself overwhelmed by the sheer number of people and experiences that shaped his life in art.

“My hands began to shake, my mouth went dry, and my heart became flooded with the multitudes of artists and mentors who have created art through a love for humanity,” he writes. “From artists I’ve met personally to those I’ve met solely through their work, I felt overwhelmed by the wave of images that left me weak on my own shore.”

Where, he wondered, does gratitude begin? With parents who moved from Missouri to Southern California, “working their asses off to give you a leg up”? With Miss Vichary, a third-grade teacher who entrusted him with wheeling an art cart filled with tools and materials to classmates? Or with a high school literature teacher who cried while teaching about the Kent State massacre.

Music formed an early education alongside school: Bowie, Lou Reed, Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, followed later by Coltrane, Mahler, Miles Davis, Schoenberg, Philip Glass, Hank Williams, Aretha Franklin, and many others. Writers and poets added still more layers of influence. “This is what happens when you open an untamed monkey brain, with little self-control and a penchant for rambling with a question about love!” he admits.

Brian Snapp, “Martini 2”

Again and again, however, his memories return to teachers and to the visual arts.

Snapp first learned the potter’s wheel during the summer between junior high and high school. High school years unfolded between ceramics studios, surfing, water polo, and concerts in Los Angeles with what he describes as a “merry band of delinquents.” A ceramics instructor, Phil Doran, provided technical grounding while allowing creative freedom. After graduation, Snapp drifted between community college courses and playing in rock bands during the Los Angeles club scene, returning periodically to Cypress College during moments of transition.

There, art historians Betty Disney and Ellen Berger opened new historical horizons, introducing him to Neolithic art, proto-Renaissance painting, and modern and contemporary movements. Through their teaching, he fell in love with an expansive lineage of makers — from the unnamed artists of Lascaux and Le Tuc d’Audoubert to Cycladic figures, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Matisse, Kandinsky, Duchamp, Louise Bourgeois, Nam June Paik, Judy Chicago, and the experimental spirit of Fluxus.

But the mentor who would fundamentally alter the course of his life entered unexpectedly.

“I was in another instructor’s class centering some clay when Char knocked into me on purpose and said, ‘When are you going to take a class from me?’”

Charlene Felos, “The Rescues and the New Collapse”

Charlene Felos—known simply as Char—became teacher, mentor, collaborator, and lifelong friend. What began as a classroom encounter grew into more than forty years of artistic exchange and personal connection.

“Her call to arms was No Fear! She would prod, ‘What are you afraid of, no fear,’ when I was being timid or, ‘When are you going to stop doing that,’ when I would fall into boring, cliché mark-making. …Probably the most important lesson was that it was all about the process. Ideas did not come from lightning sent from the gods but discoveries in the making.”

Under Felos’s mentorship, clay became a gateway into a broader artistic lineage. She introduced him to pre-Columbian and Indigenous traditions, Mingei philosophy and wabi-sabi aesthetics, and artists including Shoji Hamada, Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, Viola Frey, Beatrice Wood, Otto and Vivika Heino, Rudy Autio, Jun Kaneko, and Joe Soldate. Encouraged by Felos, Snapp later studied with Soldate and earned his MFA at California State University, Los Angeles, continuing a lineage he came to understand as both artistic and personal: Peter Voulkos to Paul Soldner to Joe Soldate to Char—and ultimately to himself.

Their relationship extended beyond the studio. “We shared music, books, food and drink,” he recalls. “She had a lust for life and people.” After Snapp moved to Utah—where he would become a professor in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Utah and later serve as department chair from 2009 to 2016—the two maintained a weekly ritual of Sunday phone calls, talking about art and the things they valued most deeply.

From left: Joe Soldate, Charlene Felos, Brian Snapp

Platter by Charlene Felos

Over decades, Snapp’s own career expanded internationally. A Professor Emeritus at the University of Utah, he has worked across ceramic sculpture, mixed media, print, and installation, presenting work in exhibitions and conferences throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, including international ceramic forums in China and Korea and exhibitions at institutions such as the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. His work consistently explores spaces of contemplation and compassion, addressing themes of spirituality, diaspora, war, and holistic living.

Brian Snapp, “Sanctuary for the bent and twisted”

Yet throughout these achievements, Felos remained central to his understanding of art and teaching. “She was a ferocious, unintimidated artist with a heart the size of a galaxy,” he writes, “unwavering in her loyalty to students, her art, teaching through example.”

Felos died of cancer in 2018. For Snapp, her presence persists through memory and practice.

“If you feel like you’re losing touch with someone who has passed, conjure up their laugh, they’ll come right back to you.”

He credits her influence simply and directly: “I have Char and her soulful generosity to thank for where I am today.”

“I miss her dearly.”

Who Do You Love

During the month of February we ask Utah artists about a specific piece of art or artist, living or not, local or global, that has sparked their curiosity or influenced their work. We run their responses throughout the month.