The unveiling of six artist-transformed pianos was accompanied by a free public concert in front of Abravanel Hall on Friday, May 31. The six upcycled pianos are part of the Key Changes project, a collaboration between Salt Lake County Arts and Culture, the Gina Bachauer Piano Foundation, and […]
The exhibition’s title, Home Is Never Dead, It Isn’t Even Home, is a reference to a quote from William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun, which goes, “the past is never dead, it isn’t even past”—and in this installation by SLC artists and partners Julian Croft and HALO, the […]
So many of Utah’s storied art venues have lost their homes, or are in danger of losingthem, that you could be excused for thinking we must have too many of them. Why are they among the first places developers think of when looking for somewhere to build? The […]
A statewide exhibition brings an opportunity to show work to an audience that may not be reachable otherwise, but the work should accurately represent the artist’s materials, style, and subject matter, not create expectations that additional explorations of the artist’s body of work will not fulfill. Or should […]
A visitor to Phillips Gallery during what are becoming their annual showings of the art of Melinda and Joseph Ostraff (see last year’s here) might initially have the impression that the artists work in two formats. One, the more common by far this year, is about the size […]
Karilee Park was frustrated with teaching art. Everything in the field seemed to be lacking: funding, engagement from students, respect from peers, personal enjoyment. All of which made her career choice unsatisfying—a career she hadn’t even planned on entering. Becoming a teacher was a matter of necessity for […]
The main gallery at Phillips is large enough to allow viewing a painting from a moderate distance, a point of view where one current work presents as a charming landscape, featuring a cottage beneath two large trees that resemble tulips. On a clothesline from one of the trees […]
The title piece of Elmer Presslee’s first Salt Lake exhibition since 2017, “The Flannel Void” may be the least disturbing work for many visitors to this chamber of playful horrors in the Underground Gallery at Bountiful Davis Art Center. While his fans will accept it as part of […]
It was a time of rapid change and innovation, but also of anxiety and turmoil: the hope of progress walked hand in hand with the anguish of suffering. And all of it was reflected in the proliferation of art movements in Europe at the beginning of the 20th […]
Day Christensen’s bronze sculpture of a giant Apricot near the corner of 500 North and 300 West has been installed for several months, but it was recently celebrated by Salt Lake City officials in conjunction with the opening of the public plaza the sculpture was commissioned to anchor. […]
A muse is what the ancient Greeks called it: the voice that inspires the artist. The Celts had Brigid. For the Christian artist, there’s the Holy Spirit. The Hindus have Saraswati. For Scotty Mitchell, the voices speaking to her came from an entire menagerie. “One morning, while drinking […]
In 1986, I toured a pair of museums on Trafalgar Square in London: the National Gallery, possibly the finest collection in an international field marked by many superb contenders, and the National Portrait Gallery, where I encountered a modern portrait that came to haunt me over the years. […]
In the vibrant streets of South Salt Lake, a new mural spans nearly 180 square meters, serving not only as a canvas of colors but as a medium for critical social commentary. The mural’s imagery is striking—figures wielding tools that symbolize the creation and manipulation of their own […]
“I see curation as a very collaborative process,” says Emily Lawhead, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Off the bat, it’s clear that Lawhead’s approach to curation is abundantly refreshing and crystal clear. To Lawhead, curation is a communal practice, enlisting […]
You may already be familiar with McKay Lenker Bayer, or at least with her creative mind. She’s the one who decided you should get on your hands and knees with a magnifying glass to look at really small versions of art. What began as a class assignment, and […]
It’s appropriate—and one suspects not by chance—that Bunnie Reiss’ mural for the 2024 South Salt Lake Mural Fest faces the parking lot of Bjorn’s Brew (though it’s actually painted on the side of Elite Auto Sales, 2161 S. State Street). The mural’s themes of nature and animal companionship […]
Salt Lake City artist Trevor Dahl has had a busy year. First, there was his participation in Artists of Utah’s 35×35 show, then his two-person exhibition at FICE Gallery in March, and now his new mural, which just went up at South Salt Lake’s Mural Fest. His mural, […]
At the beginning of this century, webcams began to revolutionize the way we could experience the world: from our computer screens, at any given moment we could see what was happening at various points in the world. The view could be mundane or majestic, all depending on where […]
A late spring storm descended on northern Utah just as the foothills of the Wasatch Front were bursting into bright green and gardens all along the urban corridor were in full bloom. Chuck Berrett’s new mural wrapping three walls of the Cozy Coffee Lounge in South Salt Lake […]