The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.
There’s definitely a bit of odd packed into this nook of Salt Lake City: a bike park with a freeway for a roof, a winery that’s also a temple, a steel shop turned graffiti wall, a community garden in the middle of an industrial stretch. If you wanted […]
New York art critic Jerry Saltz once offered a piece of advice to artists, collectors and critics alike: know what you hate. And this sculpture, on South Temple, is what he hates. In March 2018, Gillie and Marc Schattner unveiled “The Last Three” in New York’s Astor Place: […]
Monica Pasqual left for Salt Lake City the day an earthquake shook the valley—the same week the world shut down for COVID-19, the same week her brother lay dying of the virus. She drove from the Bay Area, where she’d spent decades as a music producer and recording […]
It’s called the problem play. A problem because no one can agree what it is—tragedy, comedy, satire—least of all audiences, who think they’re in for one thing and discover another. So it’s rarely staged (1999 was the last time it appeared in Cedar City). But it opened the […]
Lindey Carter’s large canvases anchor the upstairs space at Phillips Gallery this month. Scattered among Carter’s large pieces are smaller oils on panel by David Cassil. The two bodies of work share a register of muted atmosphere and restrained color close enough that, without prior knowledge of the […]
In third grade, Tony Jacobsen built a diorama of the Grand Canyon. His school put it on display in the library, and Jacobsen found reasons to return to it—restroom pass, lunch break, any available detour—looking again, mentally revising. Others were fascinated as well. When he had talked to […]
If you know what to look for, they are not hard to find. In the Daughters of Utah Pioneer museums scattered across the state, you’ll discover them tucked among quilts and furniture and other artifacts of domestic life. They may fool you at first glance. This is a […]
When Briana Dolan and Kevin O’Keefe opened the doors of the Mountain America Exposition Center in Sandy on May 14th, they were testing a thesis. Salt Lake City, they had argued for the better part of a year, was ready for a serious, national-caliber fine art fair. The […]
When Ann Poore wrote about Clubhouse on South Temple for 15 Bytes in early 2017, the ink was barely dry on the deed. Dave Brewer and Jessie Jude Gilmore, then co-owners of Photo Collective Studios, had purchased the historic Ladies’ Literary Club building had purchased the historic Ladies’ […]
Twenty years ago, 15 Bytes paid a visit to what we called one of the most unique sculpture gardens you’ll find “well, anywhere.” The Gilgal Sculpture Garden, tucked behind houses and businesses at 749 East 500 South in Salt Lake City’s Central City neighborhood, hasn’t moved. Many Salt […]
A father’s wishes for his son can be a dangerous thing. Arash Shoveiri’s father was an art lover. “He always told me: you have to grow in your art and be successful. This is my wish for you.” But he also stressed that as an artist, you must […]
THE NOMAD’s Issue 4, “Breakthroughs,” is more about the through than the break. There are few explosive moments, not many trumpet blasts. Instead, the issue gathers fiction, memoir, lyric essay, prose poem, and poetry—fifty-four pieces by twenty-seven writers—around breakthrough as passage, as a moving through. The variety of […]
“Besides my children, this has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I would have done all this for free.” Lesly Allen is talking about South Salt Lake’s Mural Fest, now in its ninth year and established as Utah’s largest mural festival. She’s not being sentimental. She […]
Before it became International Workers’ Day, before it became a bank holiday, May 1st was a festival of spring: dancing, drinking, flirtation, communal release. It was a ritual of renewal with pagan roots and Christian overlays, not wholly approved by the authorities, where villages gathered around a tall […]
“I don’t want my kids to do my legacy,” says Greggory Wood. “I’m hoping my kids will think well enough of me that they’ll think I’ve given them enough tools to live their life—but not live their life like I think they should live it.” It’s a statement […]
When curator Jeff Lambson first arrived in Utah in 2007 to become the first curator of contemporary art at Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art, it felt like a moment. Contemporary art in the state was gaining momentum, and institutions that had not always been in conversation with […]
“Architecture is the way we commit to a political philosophy in a lot of ways.” Van Lewis says it almost in passing, but it carries weight. It suggests buildings aren’t neutral containers for life — they record what a city believes about itself, or at least what it’s […]
For an exhibition of Christian art, there are surprisingly few images of the main character. The first painting you encounter in Earthbound and Heavenward is Herbert Schmalz’s “The Return from Calvary”—a large, theatrically lit academic canvas that anchors the exhibition’s entrance. It depicts a group of four women […]
You don’t pay taxes on unfinished homes. That may not be the only reason so many houses in the community of Colorado City-Hildale went unfinished, but it is what first drew Jim Mangan to the place. Known for his work across the American West—particularly in Utah and Colorado, […]
