“All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere.” With those words, Aleksandar Hemon introduces readers to the voice of a cipher, the mystery man at the center his novel The Lazarus Project. This might also be a […]
In a painting titled “I Will Hold You Above the Treetops,” a parent standing on the crest of a ridge embraces and lifts a child. A viewer might casually assume this is a father, but on closer approach, the pair could just as well be a mother and […]
It’s unlikely anyone has tried to count the number of art students who begin their practice by drawing or painting people, though it’s possible a majority do. Then again, one of 15 Bytes better writers, Hannah Sandorf Davis, was able to track how art schools typically respond when […]
At first glance, it seems the key to poignant feeling in art is simplicity. Surely Randee Levine’s “Empty Vessels,” one of 18 mixed-media impressions now at Phillips, could hardly be more simple or more striking. Two monochrome items of tableware, perhaps a cruet and a small bowl or […]
The water cycle—traditionally how seawater loses its salt as it evaporates from the ocean, falls as rain on the land, and returns to the sea in rivers—is getting a new level of attention under the pressure of climate change. Hydrologists, the experts on this process, are taking the […]
When we care about our message, no matter what it is, we will also care about its delivery. —from the exhibition statement by Jason Lanegan There are times when a viewer can stand before a work of art and see that it’s real, yet be unable to understand […]
Humanity is the species that travels, and paves our environment to expedite our journeys. When we aren’t able, or don’t want to go in person, we can transport just about anything to anywhere, and all this deliberate motion has resulted in whole industries that respond to the belief […]
It would surely come as a surprise to visit an artist’s home and find in it no works of art, no books, and most unlikely of all, little evidence of the owners’ creativity. The home of Mark and Kari England, a charming house on a street devoid of […]
Too many immigrant stories in America are about innocents who come here seeking a new life, only to run afoul of hostility and violence. Think of John Lennon, citizen of the world, harassed by the government and then shot down in cold blood on a New York City […]
Surely no one can be unaware of the strife along the border between the United States and Mexico. It seems a wall is going to be built, no matter how we feel about it. Two architect-designers, Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, who collaborate under the name Rael […]
Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey began her journey in Los Angeles in 1932, where and when she recalls feeling she was an American. She would soon learn, however, that her Japanese family background marked her in ways she did not understand, and she still refuses to accept. Forced at […]
So many of Utah’s storied art venues have lost their homes, or are in danger of losingthem, that you could be excused for thinking we must have too many of them. Why are they among the first places developers think of when looking for somewhere to build? The […]
A statewide exhibition brings an opportunity to show work to an audience that may not be reachable otherwise, but the work should accurately represent the artist’s materials, style, and subject matter, not create expectations that additional explorations of the artist’s body of work will not fulfill. Or should […]
A visitor to Phillips Gallery during what are becoming their annual showings of the art of Melinda and Joseph Ostraff (see last year’s here) might initially have the impression that the artists work in two formats. One, the more common by far this year, is about the size […]
The main gallery at Phillips is large enough to allow viewing a painting from a moderate distance, a point of view where one current work presents as a charming landscape, featuring a cottage beneath two large trees that resemble tulips. On a clothesline from one of the trees […]
The title piece of Elmer Presslee’s first Salt Lake exhibition since 2017, “The Flannel Void” may be the least disturbing work for many visitors to this chamber of playful horrors in the Underground Gallery at Bountiful Davis Art Center. While his fans will accept it as part of […]
In 1986, I toured a pair of museums on Trafalgar Square in London: the National Gallery, possibly the finest collection in an international field marked by many superb contenders, and the National Portrait Gallery, where I encountered a modern portrait that came to haunt me over the years. […]
