Utah Exhibition Reviews published in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine, including reviews of local Utah artists, regional artists, group exhibitions and traveling exhibits of national and international artists.
Connie Borup’s decision to foreground water in her current work is timely, given the combination of threats coming from drought, the draining of the aquifers, the unequal division of a dwindling supply, and the ongoing fight over rights to it, all contributing to unprecedented water insecurity. But it’s […]
Probably all the important essences of human life in this world can be summed up by the works at 15th Street Gallery: paintings of humans’ cities, paintings of humans, paintings just for the joy of painting and vessels made from clay. Most of Aaron Memmott’s paintings (“State Street […]
The earliest clear warnings of the coming environment crisis, fifty years ago, included the horrific-sounding, and indeed horrific, acid rain. Pollution from coal-fired electrical generation and similar industrial activity was filling the atmosphere with sulfuric and nitric acids, which fell with the rain, killing plants and polluting rivers […]
Are We Here For Ourselves Alone? With this question, artist Christine Atkinson introduces a new, holistic way to looking at our environmental predicament, one that asks how we got to this dire point by asking us to consider where we went wrong in the first place, and arguably […]
First, let’s begin by acknowledging that there is no more important work being done by human beings than that undertaken every day by our mothers. In high school, I studied Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, which has saved countless millions of lives. Alexander Fleming had a mother. Like […]
It’s quite likely that, when Frances Geerlings Paxton set up her watercolors and acrylics in front of a dilapidated water tower and began to paint, what she primarily had in mind was to capture a bit of Utah’s romantic rural scenery, not unlike what her peer, Jeanie R. […]
“Epigenetic Mechanism #1” sits humbly on the floor of the underground gallery at Bountiful Davis Art Center, part of the circle of objects Art Morrill calls “Material Support.” Nothing about it refers back to previous art works, though it makes copious references to what lies outside today’s art. […]
This essay was published in conjunction with Frank McEntire’s exhibit Through a Narrow Window: our impact on the environment, Snow College Art Gallery, Aug. 29 – Oct. 14, 2022. All images: installation views from the exhibit, courtesy the artist. These jars were provided by scientists, artists, philosophers, historians, […]
A medium shot of a forest, with a hint of sky at the top, dense foliage on skinny trees, shrubbery surrounding their lower parts. But what’s this? The black-and-white image covers only the top two thirds of the page, while the lower third includes not only the continuing […]
There’s an old saying among artists, and there can be no doubt whose boast it is, that painters make pictures of things, while sculptors make things. That distinction may come to mind while contemplating the works of Anna Laurie Mackay, currently on view as part of Interwoven, a […]
What is Art? This is a common question, perhaps even a tired question, but one that any lover of arts has or will encounter at some point in their studies. It was the question that filled my brain while walking through the Eccles Art Center’s Art In Bloom […]
When Emily Hawkins exhibited two pigment-printed photographs from her “Matriarch Diptych” series this year in the Bountiful Davis Art Center’s juried annual, and one took first prize, her image of a luminous presence prompted speculation that she meant to invoke a divine being. Indeed, she may have had […]
There’s an old story about someone who stared at something so intently it began to smolder — and eventually burst into flames. It’s suggested this is only possible when one looks at it the way artists look at their subjects. And no, they don’t look at things the […]
The first Jim Jacobs sculpture that many Salt Lake City gallery denizens may recall seeing was a combination of two wooden objects, one a rather plain chair and the other a sapling big enough to be identified as a tree, yet small enough to fit into the high-ceilinged […]
Anyone who follows the excellent and very full presentation schedule at UMOCA has seen the aesthetic virtuosity of Jared Steffensen in action. Ironically, though, Curator of Exhibitions was not his first choice for a day job. Steffensen identifies strongly, perhaps first of all, with skateboards and boarding, almost […]
