Every January we check in with Utah artists to see what the new year holds in store for them.
Emily Plewe enters 2026 amid a significant shift in how—and how much—she is able to work. After a career change and a move that brought both her home and studio into new alignment, she says, “I am now working full-time in the studio,” a change that’s allowing her […]
At the end of 2024, V. Kim Martinez finished a four-year tenure as chair of the Department of Art and Art History. She begins the new year on sabbatical, preparing for a two-month residency in a recently devastated Los Angeles. Martinez is an artist and educator whose work […]
“The beginning of the new year is always a good time for me to evaluate the past and to implement new ideas for good business practices, efficiency, and production,” says David Koch, a seasoned artist with an impressive career. At 61, Koch finds himself at what many might […]
For multimedia artist and curator Tiana Birrell, 2025 marks a pivotal shift in her artistic focus: an immersion into the complex ecology of the Great Salt Lake, with its briny pink shores as her muse. “The color pink has captivated me,” she shares. “My relationship with this color […]
Carol Biddle is entering the new year with a 3-D step forward in her artistic journey: a deeper exploration of sculptural forms. Known for her intricate felted artworks that meld traditional techniques with abstract painterly perspectives, Biddle is now venturing beyond two-dimensional surfaces to create vessels and multi-sided […]
Beginning 2023, sculptor Nathan Brimhall is very excited about a commissioned piece he’s working on for a private residence in the Colony in Park City. “It will be the largest work I’ve done at between 20-24 feet tall,” he says. The idea dates back to 2017. “It is […]
As 2023 begins, Susan Makov is anticipating the publication of poet Gary Stein’s Getting to Heaven (and Other Miracles). Makov’s work, based on images the poets sent as source material, graces the cover. The book cover was just part of a busy 2022 for the retired professor. She […]
Newest of all in Anna Pottier’s art-world is her studio, just built in the backyard of her home in West Valley City. The 12 x 16-foot purpose-built space replaces a derelict 40 x 22-foot chicken coop/horse stable. It contained pale turquoise and peacock blue woodwork dating from at […]
Memories of a Future Life, her current exhibit at Provo’s Writ & Vision, is only one of several projects Paola Bidinelli is birthing (or rebirthing) in 2022. The exhibit, a series of sculptural and relief works that uses natural found materials like stones, branches, nutshells and bark, reflects […]
In late 2021, Cara Jean Hall joined the team at Salt Lake City’s Art Access as their Communications and Digital Marketing Manager. After spending the first 15 years of her adult life raising four children, Hall had received her BA from the University of Houston before beginning her […]
Orem painter Josie Bell says she continues to be surprised by how much her early childhood in Brazil continues to affect her work. “I didn’t know those imprints would reawaken someday and bring me to subjects that relate to nature and ecological themes,” she says. She speaks of […]
“I usually start each painting with only the urge to address a certain range of experience or moods, not preconceiving any structural forms,” says Marcus Vincent. “Color relationships are the initial decision where after structural concerns are felt, indicated, destroyed, revised, and destroyed and revised again.” Born in […]
“The one constant in my life has been writing and publishing poetry,” says Steve Creson, a Seattle-native multimedia visual artist, writer, photographer, 16-mm filmmaker and occasional performance artist. In November 2020, Salt Lake City’s Elik Press published his Big Day / New and Selected Poems, with afterward by […]
David Dibble has a thing for hay. The Orem painter was raised on a farm in Davis County, Utah, where he was influenced by the landscape from an early age. After graduating with a BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University and graduate work at the Academy of […]
McGarren Flack is ready to go big. A professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Flack began painting in the fall of 2002, while in the Illustration program at Brigham Young University. After graduation, he pursued an MFA at the University of Utah. Flack, however, says his […]
Before COVID, Madison Donnelly was headed to Yale. Like so much else for so many others, that was put on hold. Donnelly is one of Utah’s more promising young artists. While still working on her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Utah, she earned a juror’s award […]
