View of works in The Heart of St. George at the St. George Museum of Art.

St. George has a different essence than southern Utah destinations like Moab. It feels distinctly Arizonan, its southern border brushing the state line. Palm trees read differently than junipers; the rock is more vermilion than the saffrons of the southeast. Given its desolation and remoteness, it is perhaps a place humans should not inhabit. And yet it is one of the country’s fastest-growing cities, holding intact some of its Southwestern appeal even as nonsecular influences and end-stage capitalism entangle the place in big-box sprawl. All of this unfolds against a beautiful backdrop of vermilion red ridges on three sides—the 45,000 acres of BLM land in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area—with the Santa Clara and Virgin Rivers cutting through under warm sunshine. We really are that far south: the sun can feel warm even in January.

These dualities are what The Heart of St. George at the St. George Museum of Art captures through selections from its permanent collection, assembling an “essence”—a heart—of this place. Open through February 28, the exhibition brings together a range of artistic perspectives, each offering a different angle on what it means to represent St. George.

There are, of course, the epic landscapes that surround this small city within a vast network of interconnected lands. There is the perspective of Indigenous artists like Utah legend Lee Gilmore Scott, whose 2022 oil “Our Spring Rain Dazzler” depicts a rainstorm rolling across the open Southwestern sky, warm desert hues vibrate against cool blues in geometric precision, reminding us of nature’s exacting perfection. Nearby, the white pioneer Frederick Samuel Dallenbaugh’s “The Cedar Tree – Kanab Canyon” c.1875 pencil drawing conveys the artist’s amazement upon his arrival to these sacred lands, before the white man and capitalism had their way.

Dorothea Lange, “The Highway Through St. George”

That same force is equally present in works depicting the elements that now constitute the place—big-box stores and the chains that corporatized America. Jeremy Winborg’s 2017 oil “Night Colors” shows traffic swooshing through wide automobile boulevards, passing the temple beneath lavender mountains. Robert Adamson’s 1997 “St. George Boulevard” paints neon chains glowing at night—successors to the hand-painted signs of the 1950s, captured by Dorothea Lange during her 1953 visit.

Lange’s photos capture the precipice of industrialization gaining momentum while the heart of the rural southwestern town remains. If only for a moment. She captures the duality of the town’s main street in two images. In “The Highway Through St. George,” local jewelry and hardware stores line the street as a Wonder Bread truck idles nearby. Deseret News maintains a brick-and-mortar presence, its sign reading “The Mountain West’s First Newspaper.” In “Tourists Take Over Main Street,” women in high-waisted short shorts and ballet flats pass loan-financing slogans—“The New Era Beckons …to the Enterprising”—and supermarket advertisements: 27¢ Corn Flakes, Pillsbury Pancake Mix for 35¢, Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce for 23¢. One imagines the scandal for LDS townies, confronted with so much exposed leg.

All of this exists alongside the cowboy character of the place. Men in cowboy hats and tucked-in button-downs watch horse races, their attention tracking the blur of passing hooves (Rodeo – St. George). Minerva Teichert’s dainty inkwell pen drawings are another display of this rural St. George, depicting cowgirls and bovines with lines as fine as French fashion sketches, but drawn in rural Utah, where paper was scarce enough that the artist drew her infant son in the margins of book pages.

The LDS faith remains firm and omnipresent throughout the exhibition. The temple of St. George remains consistent and omnipresent across pieces new and old. There is a folk art religiosity to Brian Kershinik’s 1995 charcoal of “Gabriel that Stand in the Presence of God” and Lee Udall Bennion’s 1993 oil portrait “Contemplation.”

Alongside this is a native, land-based faith that is equally present. William Yazzie’s untitled raven ceramic sits at the foot of a winding riverbank cutting through sacred red rock lands in Lewis A. Ramsey’s 1936 oil “The Entrance to Zion.” It’s a fun curatorial play, bringing the viewer to the shore to come across this ornate Diné ceramic at the foot of these cathedrals—like discovering ancestral shards generations later, except this presence is wholly intact, echoing the enduring existence of Native peoples in this place. Virginia Dotson’s “Elements #31:Air” similarly plays with placement, the vase a reminder of the flowing waters and contours of driftwood along the banks of the river in Jim Jones’ “Angels Landing.”

Jim Jones, “Angel’s Landing,” 2003, 26×32 in.

There are ghosts that haunt this place: haunts of the small businesses lost to Chipotle and Chick-fil-A; custard stands turned into Wendy’s; family farms folded into ever-increasing mechanized cultivation. Haunts of legends like Dorothea Lange and, more locally Jim Jones, who walked through these streets. Haunts from a simpler life of caring and living with the land, as Indigenous peoples did for time immemorial. In George Dibble’s untitled 1965 watercolor, turmeric yellows and earthy browns define orderly row crops beneath an ominous gray-blue sky—a haunted foreshadowing of the sinister trick industrial agriculture would play on land and human health. Haunts of the pioneer expansion that put this place on a map to the detriment of the Native peoples of this land.

Yet there is an affection built into these pieces—for the land, for the community that still remains. Roland Lee’s “Thomas Judd’s Store Co.” and Cheryl Sachse’s 2024 “Social Hall” use watercolor to recall the town’s homestead roots. They speak to a dedication to place, a home shared by ancestors and present-day generations alike. Richard Dawavendewa’s serigraph “Sunset” uses cubic gestures to honor blue skies and ancestors above, offering reverence for the calm and purity that nature continually brings to this land.

The museum itself is an ode to St. George’s roots. Originally housed in the basement of City Hall, it was relocated to the historic block that includes the original St. George Social Hall and Opera House, “once a vibrant gathering place for arts and culture,” according to the museum. It also housed buildings that served as a processing center for the Utah and Idaho Sugar Beet Factory. In 1997, the museum moved into the former Warehouse #3, where it stands today. Poised between old and new, the building itself embodies the dualities of the city, holding the heart of St. George within its walls.

Roland Lee, “Thomas Judd’s Store Co.,” 2016, watercolor.

The Heart of St. George, St. George Museum of Art, St. George, through Feb. 28.

Genevieve Vahl

Genevieve Vahl is a writer, farmer and artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her writing focuses on how art and community intersect, how to bring access to food and covering climate solutions around the Salt Lake Valley. She also writes poetry, binds artist books, makes paper and runs cyanotype prints from film.