Maddie graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA in Music, BA in Interdisciplinary Humanities, and Minor in Art History in 2018. She has assisted in the curation of art and multimedia exhibitions throughout Utah--as a Curatorial Fellow at the BYU Museum of Art (2016-2018) and an independent curator (2013- Present).
“The medium is the message.” First coined by the Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan in 1964, this pithy phrase has dramatically shaped our understanding of postmodern theory, language and aesthetics. For artists like Vik Muniz, however, it is both a creed to uphold and an ideology to subvert. In […]
A photograph shows a little girl standing in front of an easel painting; she seems delighted to have been caught in the act of creation. Now grown, Beth Krensky reflects that this moment captured on camera typifies her childhood affinities and early interest in art. “While other children […]
For most K-12 art students, having your school project proudly displayed on the kitchen fridge is the modern equivalent of the French Salon. However, thanks to the combined efforts of local art students, a community of generous organizations, and one very ambitious art educator there is an exhibition […]
‘“Where are my people?” the mountains cry out.’ This line from a young Diné (Navajo) poet sets the tone for an exhibition curated by Dr. James Swensen, Melanie Allred, and Meagan Anderson. Featuring visual art, poetry, and ephemera produced by students of the Intermountain Indian School, the display […]
It is sometimes difficult to imagine that at one point, every monumental contribution to the arts was once new: unheard, unsung, unseen. The initial reception of works that are now considered part of the canon, has little to do with how the works are ultimately remembered. For example, […]
“An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.” — Charles Horton Cooley How does a former sugar-cane company accountant from Brazil become an expressionist painter in Orem, Utah? Well, not without much difficulty. The story of Josie Bell — this year’s featured artist […]
If you’re driving over the speed limit down Main Street in Ephraim you might miss out on a hidden gem of the Central Utah art scene. Granary Arts is exhibiting a chronological collection of works by Richard Gate, a Utah-affiliated artist who spends winters working out of his […]
Suburbia: a term which not only refers to the outer parts of a town stereotyped for its comforting (or discomfiting) uniformity but descriptive of a way of life associated with the people who occupy its margins. Both isolation and collective community can be found in these ubiquitous spaces. […]
We’ve become accustomed to a number of preconceived notions about the life of an artist; often, we picture them as colorful and eccentric, right-brained individuals, who work irregular hours, wear paint-splattered clothes, and are at the mercy of the muses, prone to sporadic bouts of creative genius. The […]
The great 20th-century American photographer Paul Caponigro once remarked, “It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” Though initially it may have been lauded for its functionality, portraiture quickly became one of […]
Reflected subway systems, upside-down metropoli, bomb threat questionnaires—these are just a few of the elements at play in Daniel Everett’s Security Questions, currently at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition includes a range of media, from looping videos to installations that, according to Everett, “address the […]
For many of us, “collage” has consisted of either a papier mâché project gone awry or the deposit of clumsily scrunched tissue paper on cardstock our kid brought home from kindergarten that we don’t have the heart to remove from the fridge. With its material mélange, the medium […]
When you think of “Mormon music” what typically comes to mind? A world-renowned chorus of 360 middle-aged balding and white-haired members? Traditional hymns sung at a slightly-slower-than-comfortable pace in chapels punctuated by the cries of children below the “age of accountability”? Or maybe even songs about popcorn growing […]
Whether it is upheld as an integral part of a religious belief system or simply acknowledged as myth by a more secular audience, what took place in the Garden of Eden continues to inform the way Western civilization has come to understand, represent, and feel about the body. […]
Secluded in a small, pitch-black viewing room in the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, a troubled musician suddenly breaks into a virtuosic drum solo. Both terrifying and impressive, the performance unleashes a combination of sounds that is just shy of chaos. After a few minutes of what seems […]
