Survival, art making, and beyond . . . by Geoff Wichert When Ruby Chacon loaded four kids into her Ford Explorer, hitched up the trailer, and hit the road out of Sacramento earlier this week, she probably thought the toughest challenge ahead was finishing her painting and hanging […]
The thing that captures the eye is a series of heavy black lines rising from a square base and curving, converging to a point. This cage stands to the right on a yellow-brown field extending beyond it, visible through its bars. On the left rises a meticulously observed […]
The arrival in Salt Lake of what is fast becoming the preeminent new style of art is marked for the moment by the appearance, on the parking strip in front of Nobrow Coffee, of an object as hard to identify as it is to overlook. Looking decidedly less monumental than […]
The first piece could easily be overlooked. It’s an upholstered pair of what the British call “inverted commas,” but Americans call quotation marks. Its mate, the last piece, closes the quotation, marking the 20 works in between as something of a statement. “It’s my nod to Postmodernism,” quips […]
I do not endorse casual use of the term “Fascist” in civil discourse. In spite of Abu Graib, in spite of Gitmo, in spite of racial and economic profiling, and in spite of efforts by the Bush Administration, the McCain campaign, and right-wing blogs to convince Americans that […]
If you’ve already read 15 Bytes then you know about the opening for Stefanie Dykes Cathedral tonight at Finch Lane Gallery, 6-9pm (see page 7). But Dykes’ work is not the only reason to make Finch Lane part of your Friday evening. Also showing with Dykes is photographer […]
Two years ago, in an exhibition at the Central Utah Art Center (see September 2006), Stefanie Dykes showed a pair of architectural fantasies: ornamental woodblock prints combining the flat perspective of diagrams with animated details and figures cavorting in space. Standing before these large prints (each 3 feet high and 2 […]
photos by Shalee Cooper When artists talk about their work they often project a feeling of inevitability. It had to be; either that or they say it was an accident. Speaking on film, Georgia O’Keeffe points to the top of a nondescript hill she feels she must climb with […]
When we sat down at our local coffee shop to talk to next month’s featured artist, Amanda Moore, one topic we had to discuss was the challenge that faces artists who use a camera instead of a brush or chisel in their work. After all, photographic artists like Moore […]
Unmonumental: the object in the 21st century reviewed by Geoff Wichert Unmonumental is simultaneously the name of a book, a pioneering exhibition at the New Museum’s new home in the Bowery for which it functions as catalog, and a school of sculpture that the book argues is the […]
The twentieth century saw a number of mediums long relegated to the status of crafts recognized as capable of producing fine art. While Martin Puryear and Andy Goldsworthy were proving that just about any material could generate a satisfying aesthetic response, in the hands of sculptors like metal […]
In the past, the Central Utah Art Center’s annual survey has sometimes sent out mixed signals. It seemed that when a venue that regularly imports exciting new art from around the country throws open its doors and invites local artists to respond, they often reply with work that bears, at […]
photos by Kelly Brooks Painter, filmmaker, free-lance graphic artist, educator, and Director of the Central Utah Art Center, Jared Latimer can often be found huddled over a laptop in his limestone–walled basement office at the Art Center, a few blocks from Snow College in the Sanpete County town of Ephraim. He may […]
We’re hard at work on the April edition of 15 Bytes, crossing our fingers that we’ll get back into our tradition of actually publishing it on the first Wednesday of the month (even if at 11:59 pm). We feel a responsibility to work hard on this project because […]
Modern transportation means hub-to-hub: the only choice for the traveler is what to do after she reaches her destination. Likewise most jobs: issues are discussed with a supervisor, but management makes the decisions. And then there are the lives of many women, whose close connections are all with […]
In each of two separate paintings there stands a solitary figure on horseback. One is a medieval knight, the other a cowboy. Each is centered on the canvas and their poses are alike. Behind them stretches an ashlar stone wall, its scraped impasto surface—inspired by similar walls the […]
While carrying out his pivotal role in the early days of Modernism, Cezanne found time to set a precedent for one of its characteristic exercises: in sixty-some paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire and uncounted tabletop arrangements of apples, pears, bowls, and bottles, he showed that an artist can paint […]
Sometimes an installation gets an unexpected boost from nature: so it was in the outdoor sculpture garden at the Central Utah Art Center this week. One of the rare sumptuously beautiful works of art with critical credibility, Roscoe Wilson’s Waste Not, Want Not (see our December issue) saw […]
Back in the twentieth century, the meticulous, pedestrian questions of art criticism were swept aside by a racy substitute that captured the public’s fancy in a way academic discourse never could. In a foretaste of what was about to happen to art itself, the response “But is it […]
