Utah Artist Profiles published in 15 Bytes, featuring magazine length profiles of Utah artists.
Alison Spencer never thought turkey vultures were particularly attractive. She knew they were important, and recognized that the king vulture is striking, but our local turkey vultures were, as she puts it, “common and plain, even ugly or scary to a lot of people.” Then she spent four […]
When Gilmore Scott got in trouble at school, he had to help the teachers explain his misdeeds to his mother. The youngest of six children, Scott grew up in Blanding, Utah, where his mother raised the family on her own and worked as a cook for the San […]
Growing up in Flagstaff, Arizona, Kate Aitchison had a father who could tell her what everything was. A naturalist and photographer, he knew the plants of the Southwest—which were native, which were invasive, what belonged where. His daughter wasn’t particularly interested. “Now I wish that I could record […]
“I saw my darkness, I saw my light, I saw everything in between, and now I’m a new human being,” says Aziza Abdieva. “I’m a Phoenix rising.” Fear is a darkness that is hard to climb out of, but Abdieva has made her artistic career by welcoming it. […]
The day young Vaughn Reid came home from a summer of falling timber and mentioned he was thinking about buying old Harry Gordon’s scrapyard, his father wasn’t having it. “You’re not gonna be a damn junk man, boy.” Old man Reid is buried a few miles from this […]
They bought the property on a whim. David and Brigitte Delthony were mid-career artists out of Berlin traveling through the Southwest when they stumbled across a property for sale outside the small town of Escalante, Utah. It was a former sawmill. The owner needed cash for another project, […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
For many contemporary artists, the space between lived reality and digital reality is becoming increasingly blurred and perhaps more ethically complex. For Allison Joy McKinney, these distinct realities merge. To understand the world more deeply, McKinney captures images of objects, people, and moments—sometimes seemingly fleeting—and reimagines them digitally. […]
In third grade, Tony Jacobsen built a diorama of the Grand Canyon. His school put it on display in the library, and Jacobsen found reasons to return to it—restroom pass, lunch break, any available detour—looking again, mentally revising. Others were fascinated as well. When he had talked to […]
A father’s wishes for his son can be a dangerous thing. Arash Shoveiri’s father was an art lover. “He always told me: you have to grow in your art and be successful. This is my wish for you.” But he also stressed that as an artist, you must […]
“I don’t want my kids to do my legacy,” says Greggory Wood. “I’m hoping my kids will think well enough of me that they’ll think I’ve given them enough tools to live their life—but not live their life like I think they should live it.” It’s a statement […]
Artists often enter school with raw talent and leave with newly sharpened skills, expected to begin careers—sometimes before they’ve lived long enough to know what they want to say. That possibility nagged at Ben Childress. After a year at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, he […]
What happens to a successful artistic collaboration when it ends in the death of one of its members? In the midst of their lives, after their children were grown, and with years of opportunity to make splendid works of art before them, Marcee and Ric Blackerby suddenly faced […]
For poet and book artist Jess Challis, the boundary between writing and visual art has never been a firm line. Her work moves fluidly across mediums—poetry, image, book objects, multimedia—guided less by genre categories than by instinct, material, and the body’s experience of making. “I’ve never felt the […]
Photographers spend their lives recording other people’s stories—weddings, events, news, the fleeting moments that make up someone else’s memory. But they rarely turn the focus on themselves. For longtime Utah photographer Steve Coray, that inversion became both a creative challenge and a reckoning. His recently self-published photo book grew […]
When Alli Harbertson first walked into the Andrews home, it was the paintings that stopped her. “They’re everywhere,” Harbertson recalls. The living room—where Karen Andrews’ hospital bed had been placed—was filled with artwork, paintings covering the walls and leaning against furniture while ceramics, blankets and small sculptures covered […]
