It was a dark and stormy night. Perfect for reading a good mystery novel, and I had a few on hand that looked promising. The weather seemed a harbinger of winter and I determined to lay in more who-done-its before Utah’s fall/winter season kicks in hard, assuming it […]
How do you cultivate and sustain a thriving arts economy when you aren’t located in a major global art city? It is a question many art institutions and organizations are asking, especially at a time when the art world is wavering and feels uncertain. Material, a local art […]
In a recent article, Art in America cited a somewhat vague statistic: 95 percent of museum collections are hidden from view. The magazine hedged on the accuracy of the figure, but it could be off by ten, twenty or even thirty percent and still drive home the point: […]
Photography officially turned 200 years old this year (or next year, we don’t know for sure. Perhaps Joseph Niépce neglected to organize his EXIF files properly). Initially just a clever employment of physics and chemistry, photography became a powerful player in politics, culture, and commercialism, and one of […]
Thanks to the mighty efforts of artists, history lovers, and people who care deeply about rural life, Helper, Utah has transformed from a near‑abandoned coal mining town into a thriving arts destination that is on a path of rapid growth. It started more than thirty years ago, when […]
Utah has never been as monolithically Mormon as the cliché would have us believe. As evidence: the many virgins of Salt Lake City. Of course, native peoples were here first. Then, after 1847, whole towns were established by Latter-day Saint immigrants, and many remain predominantly Latter-day Saint to […]
When Western Minerals and Their Origins first appeared at the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival in 2024, the creative team faced an unusual challenge. They would have just minutes to load in and out of a black-box theater, forcing them to imagine how a story rooted in Utah’s […]
At first glance, Heather Stamenov’s paintings depict people interacting with the landscape in playful ways, or responding to natural elements and seasons through athletics. But soon, something uncanny begins to surface. Synchronized swimmers glide through snow in the middle of winter. Aerialists swing from a ski lift chair, […]
Myth and memory can be both very personal and very universal. In The Stories We Hold: Journey through Myth and Memory, at the UVU Museum of Art, six artists display more than five dozen works that boil down to one thing: myth and memory unite us. Even the […]
The gas station may have become America’s true third space—that place outside home and work where strangers and neighbors still routinely cross paths. Banking has gone online. The post office is going bankrupt. Even grocery shopping increasingly happens through apps and home delivery. But until electric vehicles charged […]
After pushback from community members—more about the site than the visual content—Sabin Howard announced this week that he’s leaving Utah and looking for a new home for his Grand Liberty Arch, the massive bronze monument he’d proposed for a park near the Capitol. The Grand Liberty Arch is […]
“About an hour in, you start to really relax,” Dallin Orr says in this video profile by Austin Smock. “You start to feel really connected to things. That deep sense of purpose and peace, that’s what I’m chasing every time I go out.” For years Orr has […]
He was a painter of vivid, luminescent wildlife paintings and energetic plein air works, but James Kirkland will probably be best remembered for three major mural projects he executed in Salt Lake City. The Utah artist died July 20, 2026, at the age of 66. His niece, Amy […]
Isabelle Ghabash writes from the Great Salt Lake valley, where family history from Lebanon and Germany meets a practice steeped in archetype, folklore, and dream. Her poems have appeared in local public art installations and anthologies, as well as independent international magazines. Isabelle channels the wise voice of […]
There’s a particular pleasure in noticing something small on a walk you’ve taken a hundred times — a door where there wasn’t one, a sculpture tucked into some bushes, a box of books where where before there was just a hedge. Part of the joy comes from what […]
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 […]
On the foothill above my home there is an overflow water pipe that is attached to the tank for our small-town water source. A quarter of a mile below, the pipe drains in a cascade into the Highline Canal. From the canal there is a small turnout that […]
That it was installed during the Cold War didn’t help. Neither did the color. Or the reaction by the general Utah public to abstract art. When this sculpture was first erected in 1982, some saw in the sculpture a hammer and sickle. Anchoring the entrance plaza of what […]
It seems like every year rumors circulate that the Face of Utah Sculpture may have run its course and might be cancelled. Glass artist Dan Cummings, who founded the event 22 years ago and shepherded it through the COVID-19 shutdown six years ago, admits that he and folklorist […]