15 Bytes is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2025 15 Bytes Book Award in Art Book. Presented annually since 2013 by Artists of Utah, the award recognizes excellence in publications that illuminate, document, or advance the visual arts of the region. This year’s finalists reflect the remarkable range of art-making and art history in Utah—from a decades-long photographic meditation on a historic boarding school site, to an expansive reexamination of ceramics in the American West, to a contemplative study of urban architecture. Together, these books demonstrate the power of visual scholarship and creative documentation to deepen our understanding of place, memory, and artistic legacy. We congratulate the finalists and celebrate their contributions to the arts in Utah and beyond. The winner will be announced in late December.

Unearthed: The NEHMA Ceramics Collection and the Woman Behind It —This beautifully published book offers a wide-ranging and visually rich exploration of one of the most significant studio ceramics collections in the American West. Drawing from more than a century of ceramic practice, the book brings together works by over two hundred artists—teachers, innovators, traditional makers, and experimental voices—whose contributions shaped the landscape of modern and contemporary ceramics. Through in-depth essays and carefully contextualized artist biographies, Unearthed reframes the history of the medium to highlight the diverse cultural traditions that converged in the West, from Native North American and East Asian lineages to the work of women and other artists often underrepresented in mainstream narratives. The result is both an expansive survey of ceramic artistry and a compelling reconsideration of how regional histories inform national craft movements.

At the center of the publication is the story of collector and museum founder Nora Eccles Treadwell Harrison, whose vision and generosity established the foundation of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art’s ceramics collection. Her commitment to championing emerging and overlooked artists helped build a museum that has become a vital repository for innovative ceramic work. Unearthed honors that legacy through its thoughtful scholarship and its celebration of the artists who transformed clay into a medium of cultural expression, experimentation, and storytelling.

Edited by Katie Lee Koven, with contributions from Matthew Limb and Billie Sessions, the book reflects NEHMA’s longstanding dedication to research, preservation, and the elevation of ceramic arts. It stands as an essential resource for artists, scholars, and readers interested in understanding the breadth, depth, and interconnected histories of ceramics in the American West.

Eagle Village by Sheila Nadimi—Eagle Village: A Deep Mapping of Fallow Architecture is a striking photographic exploration of the former Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, a site whose layered history spans military, educational, and Indigenous experience. Over more than twenty years, Sheila Nadimi documented the campus as it fell into disuse, capturing its austere corridors, fading murals, and weathered facades with a careful, deliberate eye. What began as an architectural inquiry became a sustained engagement with memory and place, revealing how buildings absorb and echo the lives lived within them. Nadimi’s images—quiet interiors, monumental exteriors, and intimate details—form a visual record of a landscape in transition, preserving spaces that have since been altered or erased. Her deep mapping approach invites readers to see the site not as a ruin but as a repository of culture, resilience, and contested histories. The result is a work that bridges art and archival study, honoring the creative legacies of the Native students who once animated these halls.

Sheila Nadimi is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, design, and cultural research. For more than two decades she has built an extensive visual archive of the Intermountain Indian School campus, informed by historical inquiry and collaboration with former students and community members. Her work is known for its precise compositions, sensitivity to place, and commitment to preserving overlooked or endangered cultural histories.

Urban Calm by Peter Wiarda—Urban Calm is a striking photographic meditation on the overlooked architecture of Salt Lake City, revealing serenity in places most pass without a second glance. Conceived initially as a personal exercise to manage anxiety, the project expanded during the profound quiet of the COVID-19 pandemic, when familiar urban spaces became newly empty and contemplative. With an attentive eye for geometry, color, and structural detail, Peter Wiarda transforms alleys, loading docks, industrial façades, and quiet municipal buildings into spaces of unexpected stillness. His compositions emphasize clarity and order—clean lines, balanced forms, and subtle tonal palettes—inviting readers to slow down and experience the built environment as a site of introspection rather than noise. Across five years and one hundred photographs, Wiarda documents a city in transition, capturing buildings that range from mid-century brick structures to industrial silos—some of which no longer exist. The result is both an artistic study of the “non-place” and a record of an evolving landscape. Urban Calm is accompanied by three original poems from Jonathan Nellermoe, whose writing echoes the book’s themes of growth, impermanence, and the emotional resonance of ordinary spaces. Together, the images and text form a cohesive, meditative work that celebrates the quiet dignity of urban architecture while offering viewers a sense of grounding and reflection.

Peter Wiarda is a Salt Lake City–based photographer whose work explores the visual order, beauty, and emotional potential of everyday urban spaces. Drawing on influences from the New Topographics movement and architectural typology, his photography is known for its calm, deliberate compositions and its focus on industrial and utilitarian structures.

15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.