The relationship of success and freedom is anything but simple. Successful artists, to take one example, often complain that their work sells only so long as they repeat a winning formula, and they may openly pine for their days of obscurity, when they could follow their imaginations freely. […]
The half-dozen large, brilliantly mis-colored images by Diane Tuft currently on view, mostly at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) but at least one at Modern West, could almost be Color Field paintings, if they didn’t contain so many photographic hints and clues. There’s another, also at […]
There is one portrait figure by Irene Rampton that stands out at Phillips Gallery. “Mom and Me Out On the Town” differs in the way it observes not the unique look of a sole figure, but includes two women who are as noteworthy for their similarities as for […]
Egyptians, Romans, and Europeans all painted landscapes in order to simulate perfect nature in their homes throughout the year, or even for eternity. During the reign of Britain’s Queen Victoria, the invention of the greenhouse made it possible to introduce the public to galleries filled with exotic, actually […]
Along with form and content, composition and dynamics, color is one of the expressive building blocks of art. But color can also be as elemental and essential as those stand-ins for truth: Black and White. At the Eccles Art Center in Ogden, the 18th Annual Black and White […]
Above the steel stairway that connects the upper and lower galleries at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, for the duration of the current exhibition, a large monitor displays, in a continuous loop, recent satellite images of Great Salt Lake by UMOCA preparator Jeff Griffin. Watching the lake’s […]
Tears are made of salt water. Grief is love. Whatever I have come to know as love and grief, I have learned from Great Salt Lake. -Terry Tempest Williams The fate of Great Salt Lake is hardly more than a footnote in the longer story of how immigrant […]
Often, when an artist with a well-established, familiar, even popular mode decides to undertake something new, the news travels fast. So, many who gathered at David Ericson’s gallery in the Avenues for the unveiling of Emily McPhie’s new work were there in anticipation of something they’d not seen […]
In the hierarchy of values, materials such as ink, marble, uranium, and gold are worth less than the alchemical power of art. And art, in turn, is less valuable than life. This may help explain why the collages of Liberty Blake, though made of paper—and often of discarded […]
Given the level of skilled technique we so often encounter today, it’s not all that unusual to learn that what appeared to be a photograph is actually a painting. The only reason this took until now is that for centuries the masters didn’t have photos to mimic, and […]
The practice of carrying one’s own water in a purpose-made bottle—a modern canteen—has become commonplace, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility that the person carrying water also has a carafe set aside for the purpose at home. And they may even have a traditional silver spoon they […]
Sam Wilson was the first Utah artist whose work caught my attention, and he remains foremost for me among the many fine painters, sculptors, printers, assemblers, media mixers, and raconteurs I’ve been privileged to meet in the years since. Sam never put as much effort into spreading his […]
Art Access has gone through many changes since its salad days as a must-visit gallery early in the new millennium. Over the intervening years, many of Utah’s best-known artists took turns helping artists of proven merit, but who were prevented by various circumstances from achieving their potential, to […]
Museums have a feeling of permanence about them, which they try to impart to the contemporary art they’ve recently started showing. Good luck with that. Galleries, meanwhile, come and go, their fates mostly linked to the individual directors who start them, give them character, and close them down […]
Murals — works of art executed directly on walls — brought about the foundation of art as we understand it: meant to be shared by the public. Cave paintings dating back as much as 40,000 years were discovered and admired anew by modern eyes. Egyptians not only carved […]
Given the fundamental motivating role of religion in cultural and artistic expression all over the world, it’s not surprising that the first art work to employ the renaissance discovery of accurate visual perspective was such a work — Masaccio’s “Holy Trinity,” which depicts the three-persons-in-one-God enumerated by Christian […]
It’s clear why Welter distinguishes these works by calling them “fiber art.” Many quilts, especially those likely to be seen in the gallery today, may be no less art, but are more public in their intentions and expression. Rosanna Lynne Welter’s textiles distinguish themselves by sharing more personal, private, even intimate thoughts and feelings. What they don’t do is look like what’s expected, and in that many be found the most important clue of all.
