Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
A striking new mural titled “Daylight” now graces the side of an industrial building along Salt Lake City’s Folsom Trail. This expansive artwork, running 275 feet eastward from 1000 West, is the latest visual enhancement to the rapidly evolving trail. The mural, with its intricate patterns of blue […]
“I experience moments in the natural world that fill me with resonance and freedom,” says Salt Lake City artist Lauren Underwood. “These experiences may happen close to home on a neighborhood walk or in the garden or they may happen far from home on a hike or adventure.” […]
When she was four years old, MyLoan Dinh fled Vietnam with her family. Her mother packed a small bag with provisions. Her father burned all his identifying documents. They boarded the “Lam Giang,” the last South Vietnamese Navy ship to leave Saigon. Nearly half a century later, these […]
You could consider it the immigrant dream. Since coming to Utah from Mexico with her parents as a young teenager, Nancy Rivera has gone to university, embarked on a promising career and found a partner to share her life. She has made Utah her home. But the plaintive, […]
As the gates of heaven are opened and dead relatives reunite with their families, Day of the Dead celebrations can turn into festive events. At the many exhibitions celebrating the holiday throughout the state, including at the St. George Art Museum, you’ll find rollicking skeletons, multi-colored flags, dance […]
In commercial advertisements, everything is “new.” The artists who staff Phillips Gallery know only too well that the components of art are rarely all that new, and so they change one letter of that adjective, transposing an e for an o and saying “now.” Or more formally, they […]
“Haptikos #3: (Missoula Blue)” is only one part of an expansive collection of new works by Heidi Moller Somsen, showing currently at Phillips Gallery. But it makes a big point: one that may have surprised even the artist. Technophiles and those who pay close attention to their cellphones […]
It’s easy to get in a rut. Same meals. Same routes. Same wardrobe. Even same art. Salt Lake City has felt in a rut. For years now, murals have been popping up all over the place. Some of them very good. Some less so. But, good or bad, […]
If neo-classicism was the architecture of the American republic, brutalism became the style of the American empire. Under John F. Kennedy’s administration, the federal government prioritized funding for public buildings, infrastructure, and urban renewal projects at a time when the stripped-down, imposing style was in vogue in architectural […]
In the literally titled “Facing South,” the Utah State Capitol appears not as we usually see it, as the climax of passing through the sprawl of Point of the Mountain, the Jordans, Murray, South Salt Lake, and so on, ascending the cove-like northern end of the Wasatch Front […]
Your intuition might suggest otherwise, but abstraction has been the rule and realism the exception in art. From the caves of Chauvet to the walls of Canyon de Chelly, artists have always extrapolated from the material world to create a pictorial language. (And a written one: most of […]
The title says it all. In September of 2022, at the AAUW Utah Women’s Art Exhibition, among nearly a hundred professional quality works of art, the Marie Eccles Caine Student Honor was awarded to Allie Wheeler for “Presence,” which celebrates not only the domestic roles of women, but […]
Many art exhibitions now include a video as part of the display, often showing the work in progress. Picasso was probably the first artist with the confidence to paint in front of a camera, brushing an image on his side of a pane of glass while the camera […]
The ultimate aim of any multi-artist exhibition is to achieve a pairing, trio, or subsequent combination so brilliant that everyone is left asking why these particular artists didn’t team up sooner. The artworks would enhance and underscore each other so well that it appears to be a match […]
The art and architecture of Pre-Columbian Mexico work together to produce an effect that is rightly described as “colossal,” and that’s the term artist Horacio Rodriguez uses to describe the larger-than-life ceramic heads that make up “Yuma 14.” A selection of them appropriately occupies the only solid wall […]
Trent Call is a little bit “Disney;” Clint Call is a true Geppetto – a wizard with wood. Together, son and father have a hell of a show going down at Finch Lane. Best in show? Probably the numerous, notable, and intricate hanging kinetic pieces along the walls on […]
This might be the one gallery we don’t want to move downtown. With the number of galleries closing up or moving away from our bedraggled, yearning city center (see our article here), any new blood would be welcome blood. Right? But Mestizo Arts’ strength, its crowning achievement, its […]
Walking through As You Are, the assembly of 35 recent paintings by John Sproul that make up his latest outing at Salt Lake City’s Current Work, it occasionally feels as though one of Utah’s most skillful and imaginative artists has set out to add “The Painter of Halloween” […]
Symbols being slippery things, you don’t have to believe Joshua Luther when he tells you his current works are about the transmission of knowledge and wisdom. Or, believe him, Luther being the hand that drew these images and the mind that conceived them. But don’t feel constrained by […]
