During the month of February we ask Utah artists about a specific piece of art or artist, living or not, local or global, that has sparked their curiosity or influenced their work. We run their responses throughout the month.
Joseph Toney looks to a variety of sources for influence. He aspires to be like Albrecht Dürer, the German Renaissance artist who was an early typeface designer, mathematician, painter, illustrator and printmaker, by mastering several mediums. He looks to 20th-century art movements like Cubism, Futurism and Op Art […]
Colour Maisch says she loves artists “who are able to distill an idea down to a primary form or space and allow some breathing room.” It’s the kind of art that provides a break “from a constant barrage of meaningless chatter.” Martin Puryear is just such an artist. […]
“I have a major art crush on John McAllister,” says Nancy Andruk Olson. She found him on Instagram, which she began using a few years ago when she was getting back into painting after a motherhood-inspired hiatus. “Like all major crushes, I use the internet to stalk him […]
Bernard Meyers’ graduate thesis explored the roots of creative expression and paths to moments of inspiration, so you’d think he’d be fairly verbose about the artists that have inspired him. But some points of inspiration are so powerful it’s enough to simply point and says: “There.” Meyer took […]
Emilia Wing says she has been drawn to the work of Gustav Klimt, ever since she discovered the artist as a child. “I didn’t know what it was about his work, but I remember not being able to take my eyes off of his paintings,” she says. “Something […]
Pick just one artist you love. It’s not an easy thing. But if you’re thinking about it and there’s one artist you keep coming back to, again and again (and again), maybe that’s the one.
For Rachel Henriksen it’s the late, Cuban-bornFelix Gonzalez-Torres.
“There are artists that you fall in love with because of their use of color, their subject matter, their sense of humor conveyed in their art – Wayne Thiebaud is ‘all of the above’ for me,” says Paul Heath. Heath was first introduced to Thiebaud’s artwork in the […]
Megan Gibbons discovered Richard Diebenkorn in high school and has been inspired throughout her career by the California artist’s vibrant colors, geometric lines and the visible history of process in his abstractions, landscapes and figures. At one point, Diebenkorn inspired her into a sort of mid-life crisis. Gibbons […]
When Claire Åkebrand was a child growing up in Germany, her father had a print of a Paul Klee painting hanging above his couch. “I remember sharp, fuzzy fish and other delicate, vibrating shapes and colors,” says the self-taught Swedish artist who has been in Utah since she […]
“Sometimes I love an artwork for the unusual usage of materials, sometimes for the surprising pairing of the content/idea and technique” says Lenka Konopasek, a Czech-born artist who received her BFA degree from the University of Utah and her MFA from Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. […]
It was in a figure structure class at the University of Utah taught be John Erickson that Clinton Whiting was introduced to the drawings of Alberto Giacometti, even if only in reproduction. “They were like nothing I had ever seen before. You could literally see the thought process […]
Jim Jacobs could name a lot of artists he loves — Doris Salcedo, Rachel Harrison, Kaari Upson, Jessi Reaves, Roxy Paine, Martin Puryear, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson — but if he had to pick just one? “Rafael Lozano-Hemmer” says the Philadelphia native who taught art at Weber State […]
David LeCheminant was a glass artist with a decade of experience when he moved from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in 2007. He found the transition difficult — with proper studios and trained assistants in SLC in short supply — so he would return to San Francisco “to work in a proper glass blowing studio.” It was on one of those trips that he visited the newly rebuilt DeYoung Museum where there was a retrospective of Louise Nevelson. “Until that moment, I didn’t believe in love at first sight, but that exhibition changed that idea — and changed the ultimate direction of my career as an artist,” he says.
David Meikle is a Salt Lake City native whose promising career as an artist was signaled early on when, in 1987, he was the state winner in art in the Deseret News Sterling Scholar Competition for high school students. That promise has been fulfilled with various awards and […]
“Venus and the Gift,” Sunny Taylor, acrylic on panel, 29×25,” 2017 When she’s creating her paintings, Sunny Belliston Taylor thinks in terms of “constructing” an image, or “building” a surface. “I piece visual information together in a way that feels very sculptural,” she says. “And although my works are […]
Shawn Porter’s works are derived from observation, developed by idea, and realized through a mastery of diverse materials and technique. The physicality of his installations capture the viewer with an aesthetic composed of formal elements and a playful taste for pushing the boundaries of material, balance and weight, […]
Lydia Gravis, an artist who lives and works in Ogden, where she’s gallery director of the Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery at Weber State University, earned her MFA from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Boston. The artist she loves, Julie Mehretu, a native of Ethiopia, […]
Printmaker and artist Martin Blundell, whose son, photographer Simon Blundell, is profiled in February’s edition of 15 Bytes, studied at the U under Robert Kleinschmidt during the mid-70s and is well known for his mixed-media drawings and paintings. He and two partners just sold SDI, a large Salt […]
New York and London’s David Zwirner Gallery just closed a show by the West Coast video artist Diana Thater that The New York Times called “spectacular”. Salt Lake City artist Trent Alvey, who herself blends art and science in her work, says a news release from the gallery […]
