The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.
On a paved path that brings you from 21st-century, highway-adjacent developments toward the classic 20th-century town center, three cut-out metal sculptures greet you: a miner, a dinosaur and a pictograph. Welcome to Price, Utah. First there were the dinosaurs — the nearby Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, on the […]
In the ever-evolving landscape of contemporary art, new mediums and materials constantly emerge, challenging conventional notions of what constitutes fine art. But sometimes we look to old materials and techniques and reimagine or recontextualize them. For centuries the result of practical necessity — and generally considered a folk […]
If you like your skateboard decks artistic, but whole, rather than chopped up and stitched together (see here), the Urban Arts Gallery’s annual skateboard deck competition may be your thing. Every year in conjunction with the Utah Arts Alliance’s Urban Arts Festival, the gallery and streetwear shop located […]
Portraits are almost awkward by definition: how to pose; to smile or not to smile; what to include in the background. All these decisions, and the primary decision to have ones portrait painted in the first place, give all but the best portraits a sense of awkwardness. Self-portraits […]
Will it matter to you to know that these winding, twisted orgies of positive and negative space, these three-dimensional doodles spiraling and folding onto each other, these rigid stacks of competing planes frozen in time and space, were made from old skateboards? It would explain some things, like […]
It’s just all so much — the contrasting palettes and swirling forms, the scraped, stained and splattered paint, the disembodied heads and piercing shafts of color. It’s the maximalist expressionism of Matthew Choberka, this month at ‘A’ Gallery. The Weber State University professor has always practiced a style […]
Early in her career, Grayce Cutler painted traditional landscapes and floral works. At the end of it, with a nudge from Hans Hofman, she produced water scenes in forceful, expressionistic modes. In between, when the Utah art world was experimenting with new and often controversial idioms, she painted […]
Salt Lake City, and Utah more generally, needs more housing. It’s indisputable. But one suspects that in five or ten years, or even less, all these apartment dwellers embracing urban life are going to be like, “You know what would be really cool? If this neighborhood had an […]
It’s all Hegel’s fault. Abetted, in his time, by Clement Greenberg. It’s this idea that history is working along a single path, towards some specific end. (You could blame the early Christians as well). It’s the type of myopic concept that, in the art world, gets us talking […]
In certain respects the spaces couldn’t be more different. The one is a wide, dimly-lit, makeshift sort of space, tucked away in an untrafficked area on the second floor of the University Place Mall in Orem. The other is a sprawling mansion, perched on a hill, surrounded by […]
This Friday, Park City’s Gallery MAR opens an exhibition celebrating 15 years of business with a show that focuses on the gallery’s roster: all 30 artists will be represented by works that measure 15 x 15 inches. All that work wouldn’t come together without the vision of the […]
When she returned after the war, Elaine Michelsen brought home some strange ideas. Unknown, foreign, from outside. Ideas suggested in pictorial form, alluded to in spoken word. Gathered from somewhere in the the wide world, she brought them to her Rocky Mountain home in Salt Lake City, Utah. […]
“I often wonder if I were the only person on earth, would I still make art?” Russell Wrankle wrote in a recent newsletter to the followers of his online gallery, Shape Theory Collective. “I’m not sure. Would you?” It’s a question many of us confronted during the between […]
A gallerist who helped build Salt Lake City’s thriving art scene, Dolores Chase died on April 18, 2023. As her obituary states, Chase was “passionate about poetry, the visual arts, roses, the ocean, and politics.” Chase, who grew up in Berkeley, spent three years in Europe before completing […]
If you’ve been in Salt Lake City’s art community over the past two decades, you’ve probably run into Lane Richins. Maybe at Weller Book Works, in Trolley Square, where Richins has helped stage countless readings. Or you might have seen him at Salt Lake Acting Company, or Plan […]
