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.
Twenty-five years ago this week, in the first issue of 15 Bytes, Casey Jex Smith made an appearance in these pages. He was fresh out of art school and participating in his first exhibition, In and Out of Habit, a six-person collaborative show at the Salt Lake City […]
Provo September 4–7, 2026 Grand Opening: Friday, September 4, 6–10 p.m. The Outer Veil and The ARCH-HIVE present Mormanity, an eclectic showcase exploring the breadth and depth of contemporary Mormon art. The inaugural exhibition at The Outer Veil serves as a “thesis statement” for the gallery, bringing together […]
When Western Minerals and Their Origins first appeared at the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival in 2024, the creative team faced an unusual challenge. They would have just minutes to load in and out of a black-box theater, forcing them to imagine how a story rooted in Utah’s […]
Nicole Bishop receives Best in Show at Eccles competition Utah artist Nicole Bishop received the Best in Show award at the 2026 Eccles Community Art Center Annual Statewide Competition for her oil painting Everything is Gray. The exhibition was juried by artist David Dibble and features work by […]
“About an hour in, you start to really relax,” Dallin Orr says in this video profile by Austin Smock. “You start to feel really connected to things. That deep sense of purpose and peace, that’s what I’m chasing every time I go out.” For years Orr has […]
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 […]
Work began on Cole Eisenhour‘s Japantown mural Saturday, when community members painted design elements during the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple’s Obon Festival on July 11. This week, tucked behind the temple where he’s easy to miss, Eisenhour has been at work with smaller brushes. He’s painting portraits, black-and-white […]
For four days every June, Washington Square fills with white tents and the people who’ve staked their practice on them. These are the artists who loaded their work into vans before dawn, who built the walls of their temporary galleries by hand, who know by now exactly how […]
John O’Connell came to painting late, but spent the rest of his life making up for lost time. He died June 14, after more than two decades as associate professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Utah. He was 64. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, O’Connell grew […]
There are a couple of things that won’t make sense at first glance. What does London have to do with wildlife? What’s a Utah artist doing there? And isn’t that painting a landscape? Start with the announcement: Salt Lake City-based painter Nadia Cross has been named a finalist […]
The first question that came to mind when we heard Kingsbury Hall was planning a renovation was, “What about the murals?” UtahPresents and the University of Utah announced last month the allocation of $3 million in state funding for interior renovations at Kingsbury Hall, the 1,900-seat historic theater […]
On May 4th, the Box Elder County Commission held a special meeting at the county fairgrounds in Tremonton—moved there because so many people were expected to show up. Which they did. When the commissioners took their seats, they were met with an eruption of shouting and booing. After […]
The Utah Division of Arts & Museums (UA&M) has announced the 2026 Utah Artist Fellowship recipients. Five fellows have been selected in the program’s Literary Arts and Performing Arts (Music) disciplines, and eight fellows have been selected in the combined discipline of Visual Arts & Design. The fellows, […]
The works that enter public collections carry a particular kind of weight. More than purchases, they are selections, each one a small claim about what matters, what endures, and who belongs in the story of a community’s artistic life. Once acquired, these works take on a life that […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
