As it happens, the root meaning of the word “design” is to mark. That could be because designers do a lot of drawing, but it’s just as likely to be because what designers want is to leave their marks on the world. That might explain the significant changes […]
The cover of a chaise lounge looks more like a painter’s canvas than an invitation to lie down. One plant shades it, but another grows right through it. Yet it appears someone has succeeded in drowsing here, and further that whatever troubled their sleep has left a record: […]
In the foreground of “I Dreamt I Could Help You,” a large oil and acrylic painting on canvas by Eli Kauffman, two young persons confront each other through the open, driver’s side window of a bright, flame red car. We see the driver through a spiderweb of cracks […]
These must be some of the least iconic images of Utah ever to grace the walls of the State Capitol building. In place of, say, that monument to eons of slow erosion, Delicate Arch, an isolated monolith standing in a virtual sea of bare red rock, “Azure Stream” […]
In response to the historical challenge presented by the camera, painters have sought, and found, ways to surpass the limits of photography by doing things with paint that far exceed anything the camera can do. But since most of the art we see still comes to us through […]
Art is play. It’s also work, hard work: work so challenging many people assume they can’t do it. But that’s because they think it’s nothing but work. Better they thought it was play. To be sure, Mike Whiting works very hard on his art. The precision demanded by […]
I’m particularly interested in mysteries with no solution . . . . I work for myself, picking subjects and topics that intrigue me—despite the stress and grinding economic hardship that sometimes go along with it. It’s one of those trade-offs writers and artists make with the hope it […]
As remarkable as the fiber art works of Judith Scott are in person, it adds another dimension to see her at work in the short film, Judith Scott in the Studio, that plays in rotation with five other short films in the Kimball galleries video space. Here there […]
When they hear the word “desert,” most people think of oceans of sand, dunes like waves following each other into the distance. In Utah, we know better: most of the world’s deserts, including ours, have little or no sand to see. Instead, they are made of rock. Bedrock […]
There are three levels at work in Bea Hurd’s It Was Their Third Cup of Coffee. At the bottom is physiology: the human body and the human brain, each in competition for the same resources. It’s well known that while the brain makes up only 2% of body […]
In addition to chapbooks and incidental publications, poet and Utah Valley University professor Rob Carney has published three volumes of poetry. His fourth and latest book, however, comprises 42 innovative prose chronicles, each suitable for dipping into to nourish and kick-start the imagination. Because the form of expository […]
In this identity-conscious age, people have found many new ways to identify themselves. You may find yourself in all sorts of cultural activities. Each of the seven artists participating in Modern West Fine Arts’ current exploration of the theme of identity, titled You May Find Yourself, has a […]
Author, master printer, multimedia artist and Weber State professor, Susan Makov was among the first artists to sound a warning about the plight of the natural environment, depicting things in her prints like birds beset by the trashy artifacts of human overpopulation. It fact, she arrived so early […]
Welcome, my cool cats and kittens, to the . . . Circus of Death After navigating the Ramp of Doom, you’ll be faced with the Beams of Peril! Survive that and be tested by the Balancing Ball of Fright! Lucky enough to live through that? Well, try making […]
“I’m not the artist my family members are, but I write.” What Ashley Marie Farmer almost certainly means is that she never felt the sense of vocation that led her grandmother, mom, and sister to paint, her brother to shape pottery, and her grandfather to build a house […]
With an unknown number works of art accepted, the Spring Salon at the Springville Museum of Art — far and away the exemplary annual show, at the definitive repository of homegrown Utah art and artists — defies imagination. Because it occupies almost the entire main floor, flowing from […]
“I could not do this in my head,” Jerrin Wagstaff says as he passes an open palm over “Ultrascape #21,” the latest of his new paintings. This is a man who has spent half his life doing something most people rarely do, which is to create pictures of […]
Walking into the small gallery at the Bountiful Davis Art Center where Paper Bandages is installed feels like departing on a road trip so early in the day that it’s still dark out. Silhouettes and familiar shapes can be made out at first, but as inky darkness gradually […]
