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.
Josh and Catherine Kanter stand in an installaiton at the Salt Lake Art Center. In most families certain things are givens. Religious affiliation in some. Political parties in others. Even which sports team to root for can be an unspoken bond in a household. At the Chicago home […]
Kerry Transtrum places a piece of glass in the kiln. It’s a brisk Sunday morning in March. We’re in a large warehouse in South Salt Lake where Kerry Transtrumis demonstrating a technique that we can’t properly describe in these pages without the fear of internet filters shutting out our […]
This month at Kayo Gallery Salt Lake City artists Cara Despain and Mary Toscano open an exhibit of individually executed drawings, as well as a collaborative installation piece, entitled Into the White. The relatively young artists share a similar aesthetic, with an interest in expressive line executed on sparse […]
On a recent trip I picked up two books about the contemporary art world, Everything You Wanted to Know About Gallerists But Were Afraid to Ask, an interview format book dealing with fifty-one gallerists from all over the world that seemed a light enough read to flip through […]
Poetry readings are tricky things. At a reading you are a prisoner to the artist in ways you rarely are at exhibitions. A poet’s reading of a poem can give thunder and lightning to the written word (Dylan Thomas reading a credit card contract could make it a […]
A native Californian, sculptor Rod Heiss came to Utah fourteen years ago to apply his skills as a craftsman during the state’s building boom. When the housing market collapsed three years ago, Heiss encountered a moment of crisis. He made the most of the opportunity and threw himself […]
Art & Copy is a great ad for the advertising world. Watch it and you’ll be ready to give up your day job, no matter how profitable or prestigious, to join the revolutionaries and visionaries who craft the messages that bombard us everyday. Art & Copy does for advertising what Objectified — […]
The Forger’s Spell by Edward Dolnick The Man Who Made Vermeers by Jonathen Lopez Art forgers have frustrated and fascinated the art world for years. The critics whose reputations can be ruined by false attributions, and the collectors who find themselves holding a painting worth less than […]
“Space Heater” Utah State University art professor Christopher Terry is exhibiting a new body of work this month at the University’s Studio 102 Gallery. Executed while the artist was on a year-long sabbatical in Essen, Germany, these paintings are filled with Terry’s iconic interior settings — open spaces […]
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art Laney Salisbury Penguin Press 2009 352pp You couldn’t write a better story line if you were dealing with fiction. John Drewe, a working-class chameleon of a racconteur passes himself off as a posh nuclear […]
Mark England. Bruce Robertson. Jacqui Larsen. I came to know and be intrigued by the work of these three Utah artists separately, but have always felt there was something that linked them. England I came to know through his late father, Gene England, a brilliant professor of literature who […]
Matt Glass‘ photographs, as slick and polished as a Nike ad, are out of place in a contemporary scene dominated by plastic cameras, cell phone imagery and out-of-focus close-ups. But it is precisely the juxtaposition of his finely crafted scenes with their unsettling and surrealistic subject matter the […]
Gaell Lindstrom’s lifelong dedication to artistic endeavors was driven by a voracious curiosity for and delight in the visual world. For sixty years he mapped out a unique visual world, portraying in delicately rendered oil and gritty watercolors the visual splendors of locales far and near. Gale William […]
Every day the mass media has a new indicator to tell you in which direction the economy is headed. The only problem is — that direction seems to change every day, and in some news cycles is going in both directions at once. We don’t have any numbers […]
Ben Wiemeyer likes to work big. For many years “big” meant graffiti art thrown up on the sides of buildings, the aspect of his work that usually generates interest in local media outlets. But Wiemeyer, a University- trained artist, also likes to work big when exploring aesthetic issues in […]
A profile of Salt Lake artist Connie Borup on the occasion of her solo exhibit at Phillips Gallery.
Large, encrusted canvasses featuring flattened, enigmatic figures fill the orderly working space of Salt Lake artist John Sproul. The converted garage in the middle of an extended lot in the Sugar House neighborhood serves as a studio for both John and his wife, Emily Plewe. Shawn RossiterThe founder […]
The first part of this history of the early days of the Utah Arts Council appeared in our November 2008 edition. The second part appeared in our January 2009 edition. At the end of the internal struggles that disrupted the Utah Art Institute between 1902 and 1904, the “American-trained” camp seemed to […]
Everyone wants to know, just how bad is it? And not just on a national level. Locally, they want to know, am I the only one at my wit’s end? Are other galleries or artists hurting as bad as me? Is anyone seeing a silver linings in this […]
