Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
When Salt Lake City artist Sam Forlenza decided—almost accidentally—that he would go to his Sugar House studio every day and post a new creation to Instagram each day, he describes it as “the brilliant, albeit naïve idea” that took hold simply because he was already there so often. […]
Crazy thing, we were peeking under the hood of the website the other day and were surprised to find that we’ve had more referrals from Facebook over the past couple of months than from Instagram. We weren’t even sure people still used Facebook. Except, you know, your parents, […]
For more than a century, the Pickle Building stood along 400 West, first as part of Salt Lake City’s industrial infrastructure and, more recently, as a marker of the Granary District’s creative ambitions. On the morning of May 22, 2025, it was abruptly demolished—an act that erased a […]
I learned the feeling of modernism—before I could define it—by walking the Fine Arts & Architecture complex at the University of Utah. Designed around 1970 by Edwards & Daniels Associates, the complex rises in stacked planes and shadowed seams, a 140,000-square-foot maze of studios and galleries where […]
Ryan Harrington has lived in Utah long enough to watch its creative landscape reshape itself—slowly, unevenly, and often through the efforts of people working quietly in the background. Over the past two decades, he has become one of those people. His art blends the clarity of design with the energy of urban visual culture: his marker and acrylic works are built from clean lines, calibrated color interactions, balloon-lettering structures, and a long-running block-head character that shifts mood with the smallest change in outline. The work is approachable, polished, and distinctly his. But Harrington’s influence extends far beyond the pieces he makes. Through framing, curating, collecting, teaching, and simply showing up for other artists, he has become a connective thread in Utah’s creative fabric.
Park City, September 2, 1963. Labor Day. The mines are quiet—most of them permanently so. The brand-new chairlifts at the Treasure Mountain Resort are also still, the engineers testing them enjoying the holiday off. The midday air remains pleasantly cool as hundreds of locals gather at the “blue […]
When Nuha Moretz moved to Salt Lake City, she found herself drawn to two paths: in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, she launched an art career that had been simmering for years; and, to build a social circle in a new city, she and her husband joined […]
Ehren Clark would have loved this show at the Sweet Branch Library—The Domains of the Mystical. The loose, swirling, sometimes turbulent brushwork; the small figures caught up in backgrounds that dissolve into clouds of abstract color fields—all this would have appealed to our late colleague. He might have […]
Dan Evans’ work begins with the question of what remains once an image has been pared to its essentials. “I’ve always been drawn to systems where clarity matters,” he says, “where you pare things down until the lack of recognition engages the viewer and holds itself.” It’s a […]
Is skateboarding an entry drug? To art? In our article last week on Alma Allen—the Utah-born sculptor now working out of Mexico who will represent the United States at the Venice Biennale—we sketched out his teenage years, which began with skateboarding (and hardcore music) and led, eventually, to […]
Brigham City native and Cache Valley enthusiast Ned Young is an artist surrounded by superlatives, the way redwinged blackbirds circle around one of his sublime barns. Although his realism surpasses photography and his disappearing brushwork ranks with that of Vermeer, what may be mentioned first and most often […]
At the entrance to Ogden Contemporary Arts, a large video screen scrolls through 30 candid photos of New Mexico’s Suzanne Sbarge, OCA’s current visiting artist, along with staff assistants, students and visitors to the program. They all appear happy to be there, which is not surprising once viewers […]
With a name like Alma, you knew he had to be Mormon. Not necessarily a Utahn, not necessarily LDS, but definitely Mormon. Anyone who grew up around the culture knows the name is a giveaway—for a man, at least. Alma is the name of two major prophets, father […]
“It just wasn’t a good fit anymore,” says Elpitha Tsoutsounakis, who after a decade and a half as a professor at the University of Utah has resigned her position—to open a bookstore.
On a quiet stretch of Salt Lake City’s historic Film Row, inside a former film-reel vault that once housed Cosmic Aeroplane, Elpitha Tsoutsounakis is hoping to build a new kind of creative space—Books & Supply, an art and design bookstore that doubles as a studio, gallery, classroom, and community hub.
The era of mass incarceration went vogue in the 1970s, when the perceived uptick in crime had the American public and politicians shaking in their britches. Racially-coded theories like the broken windows theory and mandatory minimums disproportionately caught Black people and other people of color in the carceral […]
Sitting down at a homey café at 9th and 9th, my date and I did what any pair on a low-stakes Thursday night outing might do: we tucked ourselves into a small table, exchanged a grin over flickering candlelight, and started scanning the menu. Should we split something? […]
At the height of its awareness by the public, studio glass was often cited as the most financially rewarding medium of art. A single blown-glass master and his dealer staged several successful million-dollar exhibitions in Seattle. Tacoma’s Dale Chihuly, known to Utahns as the artistic star of the […]
Sugar House has the name, but it’s West Jordan where they actually grew the sugar beets. In the early days of the Salt Lake Valley, sugar was an expensive import and the pioneers sought a local solution. Under the direction of Brigham Young, the area now known as […]
From more than 30 years of launching exhibitions, Kevin O’Keefe has learned one thing above all: face-to-face connections matter. “It became clear that getting in front of the right person shortens the time to a decision and dramatically increases business,” he says.
