Visual artists are not like musicians. A musician will practice making sounds every day. She may tell you that if she misses even one day, she can hear the difference; that after two days, her colleagues can hear it; and after three days, the audience will know it. […]
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Maya Angelou’s flawless quatrain receives a response in Stacy Phillips’ Let’s Get Personal: Faces of Humanity, currently on view at Finch Lane. […]
Who is suffering? At some point in the life of a family assaulted by dementia in one of its many forms, this question may emerge in a rare moment of clarity. While the loss of mental acuity and the capacity to both recall and comprehend one’s own life […]
Brian Kershisnik is among the more generously talented artists presently on the Utah scene. Not only does he paint and make prints, but he writes songs that he then performs and records with a group of musicians. From there, he made the natural leap to poetry, which he […]
It was just over a year ago, in August of 2024, that Halee Roth debuted in a two-artist exhibition at her local venue, which happens to be the Bountiful Davis Art Center. Recalling those large abstractions, mixed media fields of flawlessly controlled color articulated in depth by map-like […]
Julie Nester and her staff have chosen women as the focus of their current show, the title of which, She Roars in Color, gives a good idea of why. This is not the opening salvo in the next battle of the sexes; rather, it might be in recognition […]
In reference to works of art, “calligraphy” is often used as an adjective. For example, we say a certain artist’s line quality is “calligraphic.” But of course fine hand-lettering is a visual art form in itself, one inclusive of language, but also able to function apart from it. […]
Spend a little time with the gifted, itinerant street painters on YouTube and it soon becomes apparent that almost anything can become the support for a painting, from a guitar to a guitar case, or a laptop’s cover, or even an inexpensive, mass market oil painting on canvas. […]
Whoever wrote that art is not progressive—that it doesn’t advance as artists learn how to better express themselves and pursue their goals—certainly didn’t look at the way the century of Surrealism has progressed. When, in 1924, André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism, he spoke to artists who […]
Alissa Landefeld is one member of a small-but-mighty segment of the Utah arts scene. Originally from Montana, she started out to be a biologist, earning honors at UVU and traveling the world to connect with other students of the science of life. She found, however, that her urge […]
Walking upright on two legs is arguably the most essential human trait. Walking—and the vertical posture that enables doing it—are believed to have freed early hominids’ hands to develop and exploit fine skills, which in turn called on their brains to grow larger and more versatile. Walking thus […]
In Master Classes, we were taught never to start an essay with a dictionary definition and to avoid the thesaurus at all costs. So I’m going to break two expensive rules by quoting the thesaurus here, concerning the title of one of artist Jordan Layton’s pieces, currently on […]
On Friday evening, as part of the August Gallery Stroll, the ever-gracious and most erudite David Ericson and his staff hosted the Wheatley family of artists in their cozy gallery in the Avenues. In an exhibition titled Date Night, pride of place went to Justin Wheatley, fresh from […]
“I just want somebody that sees my work to get an experience they wouldn’t get anywhere else”—Jeff Juhlin, 15 Bytes, 2011 His supporters at ‘A’ Gallery have assembled a small but eloquent introduction to the revolutionary new direction Utah native Jeff Juhlin has taken over the past few […]
“I paint what I feel through what I see.” —John Sproul “If I’m going to be isolated, I’d rather do it alone and not in a crowd.” This familiar wish of one beset by strangers comes to mind when contemplating the art of John Sproul. Consider the painting […]
There’s a tree-lined, shady lane in a Salt Lake City suburb that isn’t quite a dead-end street, blending as it does almost imperceptibly into the grounds of the local grade school. In the middle of that final block, behind a hand-forged iron gate, sits a modest-looking home—a house […]
“What is the answer?” And after a pause, “What is the question?” These famous last words of Gertrude Stein, spoken from a hospital bed to her lifetime partner, Alice B. Toklas, in 1946, seem to echo the question asked every year for the latest quarter century by The […]
An American became and remains an international figure in his art in spite of never having spent a day in art school. Asked about the sources of his creative approach, he complained that he was always “reinventing the wheel,” that is, struggling to find techniques that he later […]
Utah artists and their audiences are no strangers to the salvage of discarded objects possessing the power to suggest rich associations between these things and new ideas. Nor do we lack experience with assemblage, the bringing together of unrelated bits and pieces to stimulate the cerebral and aesthetic […]
