Utah Exhibition Reviews published in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine, including reviews of local Utah artists, regional artists, group exhibitions and traveling exhibits of national and international artists.
“Peonies VII,” etching by Jenni Christensen, photo by John Snyder “I have always loved flowers and the garden. The variation is endless.” – Jenni Christensen Although in the high desert of the Great Basin, you could mistake a small patch of Pleasant Grove, Utah, for a flower-filled backyard […]
Disposable plasticware is advertised as a convenient alternative to washing dishes, but are disposables really more convenient? With plastics clogging the ocean, factory waste, climate change, and multi-billion dollar initiatives needed to pull the earth back from the brink, we are being killed by disposables. However, convenience has […]
The history of photography is bound up in chemical and technical overhauls, and when artists combine and tweak these photographic processes, new levels of expression emerge. Contemporary photographers Christine Baczek and David Hyams, co-founders of Luminaria in Salt Lake City, are reviving alternative photographic agents and playing with […]
Utah will be host to at least four major quilt shows in 2019. Is this the best one? Possibly. Technically, it’s not a quilt show. Things That Matter is a “fiber art” exhibition. With one or two exceptions, however, these works are quilts, ones that, as the show’s […]
“Use of color” is an expression over-abundantly used, often because someone doesn’t know what to say about art, or artists: as an artist, you are congratulated on “your use of color” when, of course, you usually have no choice. Color’s there, it happens; you might have chosen the […]
Major transitions often feel overwhelming, like a wave of dislocation that renders one temporarily paralyzed. Spatial transitions are among the most disarming, engendering unique challenges to the foundation of one’s personal, social and often cultural identity. This idea of “belonging” or existing as an “outsider” has been a […]
We are fascinated by nature. We study it, copy it, theorize about it, and long for it. We also sometimes dislike it. We get allergies and curse the trees or step on a sharp thorn and resent the bush in our path. Nature excites us, but we are […]
These paintings should not be as good as they are: with their muted palette, square format and generally flat lighting, they should be boring. But are not. Patricia Kimball has never been a flashy painter, one who indulges in bright colors and virtuoso effects in her figure paintings […]
David Ericson Fine Art is a gallery’s gallery: old, jumbled, cozy. In this 1883 building, two chairs have been carefully set across from each other in front of the small fireplace, with its old ornamental insert, the solid, dull brass looking like an ancient shield against winter. There’s […]
Simmering with spring are the sumptuous studies of empty pink- sateen ballgowns painted by Lindsay Frei at 15th Street Gallery. In “Formal Facade” and “Surplus Satin,” our eyes dip and swoop into hanging, empty bodices, imagining the feel of the satin, drinking in its color like palest of […]
A family of three sculpted figures sits atop a pedestal. Ceramic renderings of pre-Columbian figures, the parents are separated from their child, who is encased in a cage. Sadly, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing tragic images of despair and suffering at the U.S.-Mexico border. Emblematic of President Donald […]
If you’re driving over the speed limit down Main Street in Ephraim you might miss out on a hidden gem of the Central Utah art scene. Granary Arts is exhibiting a chronological collection of works by Richard Gate, a Utah-affiliated artist who spends winters working out of his […]
While the two exhibits that hung together in The Gallery at Library Square during the start of 2019 offered a thematic comparison of nature and its elements as found in the works of Lisa Anderson and Susan Makov, the two shows up through April 26, by Nancy Starks […]
One of the greatest connections in the history of the United States was made when the golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, joined the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads and united a continent. Train Tracts, a project conceived by writer Amie Tullius (with support from printmaker Stefanie Dykes) to […]
I have to admit it: I had no idea landscape arches vibrate and thus create sound (albeit through frequencies inaudible to the human ear). Learning this fact alone makes attending Displacing Vibrations, on view at Nox Contemporary through April 5, worthwhile. Ambitious in its scope and message, the […]
In her profile of Joseph Ostraff for the Artists of Utah publication Utah’s 15: The State’s Most Influential Artists, Laura Durham focuses on the artist’s tendency to seek engagement from others in his work — from the artists and individuals who have influenced him, to the scores of […]
What if women were the pioneers of the West? Would our relationship with Native Americans be different? What about our impact on the environment? What would our society look like today had our region been founded under a matriarchy? These are a few questions raised by Jennifer Nehrbass’ […]
What Edward Bateman does is as much in the realm of science as art — as reminiscent of Leonardo and Edison as of Michelangelo. Which is to say that unless you can grasp what he’s about on his computer, it becomes difficult to explain the results of his […]
“Part of what artists do is call attention to things that have been overlooked, and do so in a way that causes people to start noticing on their own,” Jim Frazer said in early 2018 while working on a project in which he transformed the trails of bark-beetle […]
