Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Roland Thompson breathes color into minimalism with exceptionally crafted painted aluminum works. The paintings are non-pictorial — no image, no story attached. Their straightforward outer shapes hold a spot on the wall that begs close examination. Their bold colors and patterns are at once reminiscent of something […]
Miri Kim recognizes the influence of Seventeen magazine in her art history trajectory. It was in the pages of the teen magazine that the BYU Museum of Art curator first heard of Rice University, which she left Utah for as a college freshman. At a preview week in […]
Work began on Cole Eisenhour‘s Japantown mural Saturday, when community members painted design elements during the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple’s Obon Festival on July 11. This week, tucked behind the temple where he’s easy to miss, Eisenhour has been at work with smaller brushes. He’s painting portraits, black-and-white […]
It’s probably a good thing that so many sales galleries are going into smaller spaces and, especially, spaces with scaled-back rooms, hallways, and other narrow spaces. One reason is that this gives viewers a chance to see how well they work in similar spaces they may have at […]
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: […]
Horses have inspired artists for millennia. From the mesmerizing silhouettes in the Panel of the Horses at the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave in southern France, to the dynamic Mycenaean frescoes of ancient Greece, to Deborah Butterfield’s widely recognized sculptural interpretations, the horse has remained a persistent muse across cultures […]
Catherine Velasquez works in 542 square feet, and the limitations of that space have become part of her process. “Working out of my 542-sq ft apartment has its challenges,” she says, “but it’s also pushed me toward more intentional time spent researching dynastic works and periods, reading up […]
When the Southern Utah Museum of Art opened in Cedar City in 2016, the sculpture court east of the building was more promise than reality. During the summer, a single bronze figure—Jane DeDecker’s “The Sower”—stood alone in a field of gravel, an apt symbol for a collection that […]
When FIFA painted over one of Wyland’s whale murals in Dallas after it had been there for nearly 30 years, the artist sued. He cited the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act, which gives artists certain “moral rights” even after they no longer own the work. In Utah, meanwhile, […]
Meet the Fletchers, on view at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art through July 25, introduces visitors to three of the most important figures in 20th-century Utah art: Calvin Fletcher, Irene Fletcher, and their son Dale. Together, the exhibition argues, they embraced modern ideas and methods that […]
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 is so strange that simply placing two objects next to each other helps you to see each of them better. Sometimes it is what they have in common that is most striking, but I have always been drawn to the contrasts because they remind me of my […]
The late, great Philip Guston once said, “I’m a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over. I know I won’t remember the details, but I know I will remember the feeling of the whole thing.” Isn’t that the great […]
Phil Sherburne was born a carpenter, building since he made a chair for his sisters when he was 5 years old in the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. Inspired by French spoke-shave technique built by proletariats for their friends and family, Sherburne was charmed by the […]
