Are We Here For Ourselves Alone? With this question, artist Christine Atkinson introduces a new, holistic way to looking at our environmental predicament, one that asks how we got to this dire point by asking us to consider where we went wrong in the first place, and arguably […]
First, let’s begin by acknowledging that there is no more important work being done by human beings than that undertaken every day by our mothers. In high school, I studied Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, which has saved countless millions of lives. Alexander Fleming had a mother. Like […]
It’s quite likely that, when Frances Geerlings Paxton set up her watercolors and acrylics in front of a dilapidated water tower and began to paint, what she primarily had in mind was to capture a bit of Utah’s romantic rural scenery, not unlike what her peer, Jeanie R. […]
“Epigenetic Mechanism #1” sits humbly on the floor of the underground gallery at Bountiful Davis Art Center, part of the circle of objects Art Morrill calls “Material Support.” Nothing about it refers back to previous art works, though it makes copious references to what lies outside today’s art. […]
This essay was published in conjunction with Frank McEntire’s exhibit Through a Narrow Window: our impact on the environment, Snow College Art Gallery, Aug. 29 – Oct. 14, 2022. All images: installation views from the exhibit, courtesy the artist. These jars were provided by scientists, artists, philosophers, historians, […]
A medium shot of a forest, with a hint of sky at the top, dense foliage on skinny trees, shrubbery surrounding their lower parts. But what’s this? The black-and-white image covers only the top two thirds of the page, while the lower third includes not only the continuing […]
There’s an old saying among artists, and there can be no doubt whose boast it is, that painters make pictures of things, while sculptors make things. That distinction may come to mind while contemplating the works of Anna Laurie Mackay, currently on view as part of Interwoven, a […]
When Emily Hawkins exhibited two pigment-printed photographs from her “Matriarch Diptych” series this year in the Bountiful Davis Art Center’s juried annual, and one took first prize, her image of a luminous presence prompted speculation that she meant to invoke a divine being. Indeed, she may have had […]
There’s an old story about someone who stared at something so intently it began to smolder — and eventually burst into flames. It’s suggested this is only possible when one looks at it the way artists look at their subjects. And no, they don’t look at things the […]
The first Jim Jacobs sculpture that many Salt Lake City gallery denizens may recall seeing was a combination of two wooden objects, one a rather plain chair and the other a sapling big enough to be identified as a tree, yet small enough to fit into the high-ceilinged […]
Anyone who follows the excellent and very full presentation schedule at UMOCA has seen the aesthetic virtuosity of Jared Steffensen in action. Ironically, though, Curator of Exhibitions was not his first choice for a day job. Steffensen identifies strongly, perhaps first of all, with skateboards and boarding, almost […]
When a living cell divides in half, first it duplicates its DNA and the strands move to opposite ends of the interior. Then it pinches itself between them until it separates into two new cells, each containing one complete set of genes. The new cells are called “daughters,” […]
When Alice took a bite from a cake labeled “Eat Me,” or drank from the bottle tagged “Drink Me,” terrifying changes overcame her: she grew to the size of a house, then shrank to that of a mouse. It’s not hard to see those permutations, which artist Jennifer […]
The first thing to say about the 20th Biennial Juried Exhibition of the AAUW Utah Women Artists is that it should not be an exhibition. Instead, it would make a fine museum collection, something both permanent and available on a continuing basis. That way, when we tire of […]
What would happen if an artist decided to practice her signature by writing it over and over again on a painting that didn’t work out, then forgot to destroy it? Would those signatures, with their aura of the artist’s presence, make up for the work’s rejection? How many […]
Bernard Meyers has shown original and evolving approaches to photography at the Alice Gallery and now at UMOCA, but he always has something useful to say about it, as well. At his 2014 exhibition in the Alice, his statement began, “I love ambiguity.” In a medium where most […]
Any art is at its best when it’s new, when there are no rules as yet and everything waits to be done, rather than everything having been done already. Whether that is also true of the career of the artist is another matter. David Raleigh, whose Push and […]
