Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
There is a persistent myth about what it means to be a serious artist — that the work is everything, that the studio is the whole world, and that attention paid to anything outside it is a kind of compromise. Ask anyone who advises working artists about how […]
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 […]
Mimi Chen Ting believed movement could be made visible. In paintings filled with looping lines, rhythmic geometries, and figures that seem to pulse across the canvas, the artist transformed dance, migration, memory, and music into visual form. In a downstairs gallery at the BYU Museum of Art, Make […]
“Besides my children, this has been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I would have done all this for free.” Lesly Allen is talking about South Salt Lake’s Mural Fest, now in its ninth year and established as Utah’s largest mural festival. She’s not being sentimental. She […]
Sugar House has been arguing about itself for more than a decade. What kind of neighborhood should it be? How tall should its buildings get? What belongs next to the park? The arguments go back to when developer Craig Mecham tore down the old retail spaces on the […]
Before it became International Workers’ Day, before it became a bank holiday, May 1st was a festival of spring: dancing, drinking, flirtation, communal release. It was a ritual of renewal with pagan roots and Christian overlays, not wholly approved by the authorities, where villages gathered around a tall […]
Fifty is a big anniversary. Whether a golden anniversary for a couple, or a company marking half a century of endurance and adaptation. Any arts organization that reaches fifty years has something to crow about—a record of having weathered changing tastes, uncertain economies, and the thousand quiet challenges […]
“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 […]
There’s a wisecrack by Ad Reinhardt (or some say Barnett Newman) that a sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to get a better look at a painting. That notwithstanding, having the two media share a gallery can be an effective use of space. One […]
Each year since 1924, the Springville Museum of Art has hosted a contemporary art competition called the Spring Salon. Artists from around the country, including John Carlsen, Norman Rockwell, Emile Gruppe, and Maynard Dixon have participated. The contest still receives submissions from all over; but, the majority are […]
For years, the Springville Museum of Art’s Spring Salon has served as a place where we at 15 Bytes both discover new artists and take stock of what those we already know are doing.The 15 Bytes Discovery Award, inaugurated this year in partnership with the Springville Museum of […]
“My paintings stem from an innate desire to express something words cannot,” says Anne Wolfer in her artist statement. The challenge to those who write about visual art may never have been more succinctly stated. Then again, the unmistakable differences between the way she represents the visible world […]
Trent Call is such a protean inventor that anyone faced with the present task might be tempted to start by recalling any number of personal favorites: the facade facing the TRAX station at Ninth South that serves as an invitation to one of the most innovative urban enclaves […]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with painting from photographs. Even artists who never, ever work from them will tell you they have no quarrel with painters who do so. Photography was invented in the 19th century by painters seeking to shorten the arduous path that leads from three-dimensional […]
Salt Lake City legend and prolific painter Susan Kirby is showing both old and new works in There Is Nothing More Shocking Than Joy, a show that crosses timelines, from ethereal dreamscapes into realities that bend the narrative of history. Rendered in what Kirby herself admits is a […]
Several years ago, when so many of our artists and their galleries were devoted to sounding the alarm on behalf of the environment, and particularly the disappearing Great Salt Lake, Pamela Beach had her own perspective, literally, on the matter. From the front porch of the home where […]
Although I said nothing aloud at the time, I was disappointed in the recent Spirituality and Religion exhibition at the Springville Museum of Art. It seemed as though the show’s title had been reversed. While there were countless narrow images of specifically Christian traditions, and even more of […]
Reliquaries, a show by Hannah Vaughn, billowed on the air’s breath as viewers passed through the western-facing gallery at Finch Lane. The sunlight pouring in at golden hour during the Gallery Stroll opening cast shadows on the structures hanging by threads. Her pieces breathe, like I imagine Georgia […]
When F. Scott Fitzgerald famously remarked that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” he might just have been referring to the everyday cognitive skill of any […]
