Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
It’s hard to predict what thoughts and experiences will affect an artist’s work, but major life changes — birth, death, marriage, divorce — almost always surface in the work of creative individuals, whether explicitly or implicitly. One such example can be found this month at the Sweet Branch […]
A new residency program in northeastern Nevada, just miles from the Sun Tunnels, offers artists an opportunity for work and reflection in a remote desert setting.
The gallery titles this show Round Trip, a reference to life’s having taken Haworth from western America to Britain and back. Aside from the two bracelets and “Jewels and Ring,” a freestanding set of fabric jewels, Haworth, if she chose to follow Cindy Sherman’s example, might well call most of the works “film stills.”
Today’s column is on a subject that I encountered years ago and was recently reminded of — avoiding the cartoon look in a painting. This may seem like a weird thing to write about, but it is a look I happened upon once or twice out in the […]
There’s a whirlwind of artistic activity along the Wasatch Back this year: a large metal piece called “Urban Tornado” by Salt Lake City’s Lenka Konopasek has been installed at the Summit County Building in Kimball Junction and Riverton artist Tim Little’s assemblage “Fly Utah” is in front of […]
Perhaps the most important question that should be asked of any new work of art is this: So What? A work can do all sorts of things, some of them even unprecedented, but unless doing so serves a purpose, the accomplishment may be no more than a stunt. […]
Though you won’t expect to find the owner of a Harley, custom-finished with devilish skulls, running in similar circles as the owner of a delicately rendered redrock landscape, they both may be getting their art from the same source: Brian Lindley. After a decade working as an […]
by Will Thompson It was terrifically hot, but so were the bands; the fountains were cool, as was the jazz, and the evening air refreshing – if you lasted that long with the sun beating down at this year’s Utah Arts Festival. Still, artist and gallery owner Karen […]
When gallery director Susan Meyer tells you Meyer Gallery is celebrating its golden anniversary, it’s hard to believe. Fifty years ago, the ski resort designed to rejuvenate what was a declining mining town was barely a year old, tourists were only beginning to trickle in and […]
The art world is full of strange processes, from the rituals artists use to give themselves ideas, to the crafts they employ in bringing these inspirations into being, and so on to the necessary habits and innovations employed by audiences in sorting out the results. One of the […]
Pavlos Kougioumtzis’s 2002 abstracted rendering of Prometheus bearing fire stands on the Jordan River Parkway, along 500 South, across the street from Jake Garn Blvd. and on the same block as Neighborhood House. A greek sculptor, painter and architect, Kougioumtzi lives and works in Athens and Delphi. Discover more […]
Shawn Porter and Ron Russon were childhood friends who grew up in Lehi, Utah, and though both have become professional artists — Porter an installation artist, Russon a painter — they had never worked together until we brought them together for Artists of Utah’s May co-lab. In this […]
America has a way of normalizing rebellion. Beat poets in smoky coffee shops turned into hipster coders in Starbucks; the opt-outs of surf culture were transformed into commercial commodities packaged by Gidget and The Beach Boys; and the body art once reserved for sailors has become a rite of passage for 21st-century housewives. Mid-century hot-rod culture has gone through a similar domestication: vestiges of its fiery independence and outsider quality can be found in the low-rider tradition of Mexican Americans, but hot-rods are now a matter of nostalgic collecting for graying baby boomers, and the “weirdo” vibe of Kustom Kulture has become normalized to the point that the bulgy-eyed, adrenaline-fueled monsters that were once synonymous with the rebellious nature of the subculture have become part of the mainstream: you’ll see similar characters on almost any program of the Cartoon Network.
Teacher, artist and filmmaker Claudia Sisemore was “hot stuff” when she was 21, says Layne Meacham of his former Hillside Junior High teacher. “All the guys would talk about her and her silver Jag XKE,” the Salt Lake City artist recalls. Local artist Trent Thursby Alvey, then […]
Utah houses some of the world’s most stunning geological wonders and Mestizo Institute of Culture and Art’s newest exhibition, Et in Utah Ego, acknowledges and challenges these markers of Utah’s local identity. The show, curated by Mestizo’s director Renato Olmedo-González, presents over 100 small photographs taken from locations across […]
by Donna L. Poulton In October, 2014, David Dee quietly opened David Dee Fine Arts. True to his personality, the vision for the gallery is understated, deliberate and impeccable. The gallery, small but fine, is not glitzy and has no street presence. But the beauty and brilliance lie […]
Thomas J. Howa’s recently opened gallery is intimate, eclectic and a lot of fun. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a roster of some of Utah’s most well-respected artists. And he’s tossed in several lesser-known painters, like Sierra Dickey and Tyler Swain, graduates from USU with bachelor’s […]
After two years of operating out of a temporary home in Farmington, the Bountiful Davis Art Center (BDAC) has returned to Bountiful’s Main Street, inaugurating their exciting new space on the corner of 100 North with their annual statewide exhibition and a piano marathon. In 2013, the BDAC […]
Contemplating Karin Hodgin-Jones’ two remarkable machines, both titled “Tug,” what may well come to mind are the unquenchably popular inventions of Leonardo da Vinci: the ornithopter and the aerial screw that couldn’t fly, the parachute and the diving suit that would almost certainly have killed their users. […]
