Often, when an artist with a well-established, familiar, even popular mode decides to undertake something new, the news travels fast. So, many who gathered at David Ericson’s gallery in the Avenues for the unveiling of Emily McPhie’s new work were there in anticipation of something they’d not seen […]
In the hierarchy of values, materials such as ink, marble, uranium, and gold are worth less than the alchemical power of art. And art, in turn, is less valuable than life. This may help explain why the collages of Liberty Blake, though made of paper—and often of discarded […]
Given the level of skilled technique we so often encounter today, it’s not all that unusual to learn that what appeared to be a photograph is actually a painting. The only reason this took until now is that for centuries the masters didn’t have photos to mimic, and […]
The practice of carrying one’s own water in a purpose-made bottle—a modern canteen—has become commonplace, but it doesn’t rule out the possibility that the person carrying water also has a carafe set aside for the purpose at home. And they may even have a traditional silver spoon they […]
Sam Wilson was the first Utah artist whose work caught my attention, and he remains foremost for me among the many fine painters, sculptors, printers, assemblers, media mixers, and raconteurs I’ve been privileged to meet in the years since. Sam never put as much effort into spreading his […]
Art Access has gone through many changes since its salad days as a must-visit gallery early in the new millennium. Over the intervening years, many of Utah’s best-known artists took turns helping artists of proven merit, but who were prevented by various circumstances from achieving their potential, to […]
Museums have a feeling of permanence about them, which they try to impart to the contemporary art they’ve recently started showing. Good luck with that. Galleries, meanwhile, come and go, their fates mostly linked to the individual directors who start them, give them character, and close them down […]
Murals — works of art executed directly on walls — brought about the foundation of art as we understand it: meant to be shared by the public. Cave paintings dating back as much as 40,000 years were discovered and admired anew by modern eyes. Egyptians not only carved […]
Given the fundamental motivating role of religion in cultural and artistic expression all over the world, it’s not surprising that the first art work to employ the renaissance discovery of accurate visual perspective was such a work — Masaccio’s “Holy Trinity,” which depicts the three-persons-in-one-God enumerated by Christian […]
It’s clear why Welter distinguishes these works by calling them “fiber art.” Many quilts, especially those likely to be seen in the gallery today, may be no less art, but are more public in their intentions and expression. Rosanna Lynne Welter’s textiles distinguish themselves by sharing more personal, private, even intimate thoughts and feelings. What they don’t do is look like what’s expected, and in that many be found the most important clue of all.
Kathleen Peterson’s central concern, her subject and theme, which can be found in everything she paints, is harmony. … Humans learn primarily from models, and here are some that might help change a viewer’s life. It’s this positive, emotional conviction that inheres in them, and is felt by willing viewers, that accounts for Kathleen Peterson’s substantial popularity and presence in so many collections and homes.
From time to time, I’ve been asked if I’ve read Walter Benjamin’s celebrated essay, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Written in 1935, it remains one of the mileposts of critical art history. Benjamin argues that over the centuries when it was necessary to […]
For centuries, Western artists labored to understand and reproduce the appearance of the natural world. Art created in the 19th-century academies of Europe testifies to their eventual success, so that by 1905, Picasso could move on, reminding writer and collector Gertrude Stein that, according to previous standards, the […]
The story told in Collectable Memories rightly begins with “Swim Lessons,” in which the self-taught artist reveals an intuitive feeling for composition by crowding together five children, one of them her own daughter, in the shallow end of the pool — as well as in the lower left […]
It’s fairly obvious to the discerning that our environment is changing in challenging ways. It’s also apparent that so far, the process remains deniable. Each new degree of temperature, each addition to the severity of storms, soon becomes the “new normal,” so that the continuing slide into inhospitality remains concealed. What Jensen seeks to do in her art is to elevate that almost subliminal transition until it becomes ominous, but to do so without losing track of the appeal of the places she represents. …
What is surely one of the most thought-provoking, suggestive, and yet elusive titles attached to a work of art this season may currently be seen on the walls of Phillips Gallery. As a title, “In Between Dreams” draws much of its power from being an original turn of […]
In commercial advertisements, everything is “new.” The artists who staff Phillips Gallery know only too well that the components of art are rarely all that new, and so they change one letter of that adjective, transposing an e for an o and saying “now.” Or more formally, they […]
“Haptikos #3: (Missoula Blue)” is only one part of an expansive collection of new works by Heidi Moller Somsen, showing currently at Phillips Gallery. But it makes a big point: one that may have surprised even the artist. Technophiles and those who pay close attention to their cellphones […]
