Rebecca Pletsch, “Midnight Mountains”

The art of Andrew Wyeth was largely rejected and ignored by the stuffy critics of his day, no doubt due more to the historical moment than to any shortcoming on his part. But he responded to the resulting lack of intermediaries standing between him and his audience by making art the latter could understand directly, and about which he said, “I think one’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes. I see no reason for painting but that. If I have anything to offer, it is my emotional contact with the place where I live and the people.”

Much of Utah’s art shares Wyeth’s sentiments. Otherwise, how do we explain Rebecca Pletsch, who creates her collages and paper sculptures using easily accessible historical images that lose nothing due to her elaboration of them, but allow her to preserve the qualities she describes in her statement: “I am drawn to these images not as static records, but as living fragments: evidence of lives once vivid, landscapes once untamed, and stories that persist.”

The photographs of Little Cottonwood Canyon and its environs Pletsch uses in making the art currently at the City Library are familiar and interesting in themselves: they capture an important and varied ecosystem. For instance, the creek that carries water from the canyon toward the Great Salt Lake has always been prone to flooding, requiring a catchment to prevent its overflowing, which in time became Murray City Park. Two years ago there was a too-brief break in the drought that threatens the entire Southwest, during which the little torrent was so great the pedestrian bridges in the park had to be removed to prevent their washing away. As happens everywhere, people flocked to the park to witness the ribbon of water becoming ponds and admire the sheer velocity of the stream.
While there are many Utah landscapes in our art—many images of the high forest and the desert—not so many closely examine the margins between those places and the cities to which they are close and convenient. The people who appear in places like the Cottonwood Canyons are likely to be day-trippers, tourists, likely to be carrying a book of hikes graded by difficulty or returning to places they went with their parents, or introducing them to their own families.

This photographed area is still in the flux of history, a quality Pletsch adds to the old photos by collaging, lending them visual and geometric energy and depth. In “Fugitives,” placing the image of a couple sharing a moment in a length of cement pipe into a view of the forest could suggest something about the effect of the natural surroundings on an urban lifestyle. In “Half Light,” a sunlit path through the scree and along a rugged cliff contrasts with the dark half of the day on the other side. In “Intro” and “Xtro,” concentric squares of light and dark invoke the passage of days into years. Both works, it’s worth noting, use the same photograph, thus demonstrating the artist’s versatility and the images’ potential.

While collage is probably the most versatile and valuable tool in today’s artist’s repertoire, the expansions worked by Pletsch that have the greatest impact are those that take the image furthest from the source. “Midnight Mountains,” the elaborate, origami-like folding that turns a panoramic view of Wasatch knolls into not one, but two concentric coronas, would be captivating even if it didn’t dramatize the view.

Rebecca Pletsch, “Fugitives”

Such works are notoriously resistant to photography, depending as they do on our stereo vision for full effect. The glass artist Dale Chihuly, whose work made such an impression at the 2002 Olympics, has argued that more people will see the photo of the art than the actual art, and there’s something to be said for works that resist that trend. For me, “Bell’s Falls” and “Enrobed,” both of which partake of theatrical magic, are the most charming of Pletsch’s Echoes. Each of these has the photograph wrapped in draped and swirling threads that participate in the luminous impact that belonged to the original scene, as though the effect of light filtering through the canyon’s rocks and trees has been captured and brought into the gallery as part of the memories.

Echoes of Little Cottonwood Canyon, Gallery at Library Square, Salt Lake City, through Mar. 6.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.