Hannah McBeth studied art history, classics, and Mediterranean archaeology before getting a Master's at Cambridge University. She enjoys writing, hiking, and traveling to far-off places. Follow her on Twitter @hannahmcbee.
If you’re being followed or navigating a dangerous place, your natural defense mechanisms activate and start tuning. These mechanisms are buried in our mind and body, just as they are in any other domesticated animal. Colors get brighter, movements slow down, and you can shift from terror to […]
“To be an artist, you have to work like a madman,” says Galina Perova, her voice tinged with an intensity that also radiates from her award-winning oil paintings, found in state government buildings, the homes of politicians and influential entrepreneurs, and the University of Utah Medical School. Perova […]
The world premiere of playwright Jenny Kokai’s and director Jason Bowcutt’s Singing to the Brine Shrimp (at Plan-B Theatre through February 23) gives the Salt Lake City public a funny and insightful look at belonging, culture shock, and silliness in the art world (for more about the play, […]
Politics and religion are topics to avoid during polite conversation, but today, most would also add marriage to the list. Before the middle of the last century, marriage was an assumed part of life after a certain age, but now, depending on your generation, there’s a broad spectrum […]
Whether you’re a Utah native traveling abroad or a happy transplant trying to explain the subtle but omnipresent cultural quirks of the state, it sometimes feels like the rest of the country is glad to be totally ignorant about Utah. Playwright Jenny Kokai’s Singing to the Brine Shrimp […]
Over just the past 40 years, the number of people in the nation’s prisons and jails has increased a staggering 500%, for a total of 2.2 million people currently behind bars, according to The Sentencing Project. Agnes “Aggie” Gund — art collector, philanthropist and President Emerita of MOMA […]
From the mountain nest that is Park City, the snowy roads bustle with ski-racked SUVs. Since it sits on a higher plateau than the smoggy Salt Lake Valley, the air is clear and you can see the tree-lined ridges above — a wintery second home for many people […]
Every year the Salt Lake City art scene — sometimes lamented as pale, even provincial, compared to sister hipster cities Portland and Austin — brightens with another interesting national show or event like the University of Utah’s PaperWest. In its second iteration, the biannual show at the Gittins […]
Myth, open at Modern West Fine Art until October 31 and featuring three of the gallery’s newly represented artists — Fidalis Buehler, Mitch Mantle, and Wren Ross — combines their three bodies of work, which share a preoccupation with pictorial symbolism and a dash of aesthetic abruptness. Colorful, […]
Relationships build us up and tear us down. Our dealings with family members, teachers, romantic partners, and even people we meet in fleeting interactions mark us, sometimes for the rest of our lives. Family members and others, loved ones or not, give us the syntax to interpret the […]
From the high deserts of Utah to the shores and redwood forests of the Pacific, the exhibit Intersections in Nature describes and investigates landscapes that have impacted artists and local residents Cody Chamberlain and Len Starbeck. Both artists use their histories of mixed outdoor employment to inform their […]
Abstraction broke onto the art landscape of different countries at different times, but often as a response to disillusionment with the narrative art relied on previous knowledge of religious or mythical stories. Instead, abstraction provided a totally self-referential possibility, where an artist created their own code of line, […]
The history of photography is bound up in chemical and technical overhauls, and when artists combine and tweak these photographic processes, new levels of expression emerge. Contemporary photographers Christine Baczek and David Hyams, co-founders of Luminaria in Salt Lake City, are reviving alternative photographic agents and playing with […]
Exhibition view of Ditchbank at The Gallery at Library Square. Filling the gallery space at the Main Library in Salt Lake City with a vivid marriage of opposing elements — made and found, organic and human-made, real and reflected, flat and three-dimensional, natural and civilized — the exhibit […]
This is a big month for the Orem-native Emily McPhie. Not only is her oldest child getting a driver’s license and youngest starting first grade, her new show Seasons has just opened (and will be up through September 20) at David Ericson Fine Art. She says that although it’s bittersweet […]
“Epic Tornado” by Jason Jones Thanks to Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein storming the art world in the 1960s, scenes from comic books, graphic novels, and newspaper advertisements don’t look totally foreign in art gallery space. However, animation and illustration are still separated from the serious business of […]
Diving into the Abstract: J. Vehar-Evanoff at Modern West Fine Art BY HANNAH MCBETH ON JUNE 27, 2017 • ( LEAVE A COMMENT ) In Submerged Reflection, up this month at Modern West Fine Art, the versatile painter J. Vehar-Evanoff moves away from depicting the natural world of animals to abstracted landscapes and unpredictable natural elements. As […]
“Becoming Whole” by A.J. Oishi. Acrylic on canvas. 60″ x 72″ Notifications pinging and screens flashing: the average person’s day is filled with hundreds of stimuli demanding attention. In The Human Condition, philosopher Hannah Arendt writes that the point at which the world passed into modernity is when people stopped […]
“The Man Behind the Zion Curtain” by Ben Steele Gallery owner Diane Stewart conceived Art Behind the Zion Curtain as a challenge to artists with local ties to reflect on Utah’s social, political, and cultural issues. Fourteen painters, sculptors, and photographers responded with pieces on view at Modern West Fine […]
Christopher Lynn Misplaced Wall Latex paint on cardboard 2017 What defines sculpture and painting? How do we understand the difference between flat surfaces and dimension? What colors represent contemporary misery? Specific Abject, a group show open through May 12 at the Rio Gallery, features two- and three-dimensional pieces that […]
