Sarina Villareal Ehrgott in stands in front of the Bountiful Davis Art Center’s first curated exhibit, Joy Full, on view through March 28, 2025. Image by Steve Coray.

“Art is a human right,” says Sarina Villareal Ehrgott, Executive Director of the Bountiful Davis Art Center (BDAC). Coming up on her one-year anniversary at BDAC, Ehrgott reminisces on her past work and how it impacts the broad vision she has for the center in this year and beyond.

“I don’t think I am unusual in that I’ve been a part of the arts all my life,” says Ehrgott. The Texas native studied painting at the University of Houston, and became a graphic designer to pay the bills while continuing to create work in the studio. Her painterly works shift between figurative elements and abstraction, and she has exhibited regularly in Utah venues since she and her musician husband moved to the state in 2009. All the while she has worked in the private and public sectors of the local art community, taking on roles in advertising, marketing and arts administration.

Before joining BDAC, Ehrgott worked as the marketing director for both Park City’s J-GO Gallery and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City. Most recently, she worked for Utah’s Department of Cultural and Community Engagement. Because of this background, she knows how to approach the arts with a business and marketing mindset. “As most artists know, visuals speak a thousand words,” says Ehrgott. “People will see and consume visual information before they read anything.” In her first year, Ehrgott has chosen to focus on BDAC’s visual marketing, leveraging her background to shape the center’s graphic identity in a way that resonates with both artists and the public.

Despite her demanding job at the Bountiful Davis Art Center, Ehrgott continues to make art in her studio in South Jordan. As a professional artist, she goes by her maiden name, Sarina Villareal. Image courtesy of the artist.

Local audiences might know Sarina Villareal for her paintings that play with a combination of abstraction and figurative elements, especially floral motifs. In a new series of landscapes the artist says, “I’m looking at the encroachment of societal expansion and it encroaching on the natural land. I moved to South Jordan and I see the simple landscape being eaten away by suburban buildings.” Image courtesy of the artist.

You may be familiar with Ehrgott’s prior work in marketing and design in her role as design diplomat for the new Utah State Flag of 2024. Tasked with redesigning the state’s iconic banner, Ehrgott and her team acted as conduits for the voices of the Utah public, ensuring the end result authentically represented the desires of the masses and not letting an individual’s self-creativity overtake the flag’s new design. “We listened and then provided what we thought was the best answer,” she says about the process. “It was the most correct design for what Utahns asked for in their state flag design.” This selfless, service-driven mindset is vital in the museum and gallery sector, where curators aren’t meant to necessarily create but to reflect artists’ missions on their walls and communicate with patrons. Ehrgott’s experience in communicating with government officials and working on municipal projects also set her up as the optimal candidate to face the BDAC’s biggest hurdle to date—funding.

“We work on a bit of a smaller budget,” says Ehrgott. Insufficient capital is a grueling barrier for any organization set on community access and free resources, and one thing is clear, in order to support Ehrgott’s vast goals for the center this year and beyond, increased financial support is vital. Created in 1974, the BDAC is not, despite its name, a city or county organization, but rather an independent nonprofit. Though it does receive Recreation Arts and Parks (RAP) funds, the organization must supplement these resources with grants and individual donations. In her first year, Ehrgott’s main focus at the BDAC has been uncovering fresh and emerging sources of funding, such as new grant opportunities and municipal support from neighboring cities. There are also many ways for individual art lovers and community members to support the BDAC, from individual donations via the BDAC website all the way to becoming a major sponsor. On the horizon for 2025, Ehrgott and her team hope to launch their new BDAC membership, an annual plan that would provide member benefits and perks to those who opt in. After all, a space dedicated to making art accessible to its community relies on that very community to keep it afloat.

Ehrgott is also focused on BDAC’s primary function as an art venue. “I think since COVID, there are a lot of places that just don’t have gallery spaces any longer,” says Ehrgott.  Indeed, Art Access’s gallery space, The Rio, Alice Gallery and others have all closed in the past several years. “It’s important to me that the BDAC fills that role, where we can support our living artists,” she says. Yet, the BDAC cannot patch the holes that lost galleries have left in Utah’s landscape without proper and steady support. Despite these formidable challenges, Ehrgott’s unwavering spirit and mindset have remained steadfast. “I have not really had an experience that has brought me down,” laughs Ehrgott. Fittingly, the BDAC’s theme for 2025 is “Joyful.”

“We are nestled in a really interesting place,” Ehrgott says. “We are outside of Salt Lake City, where there is the highest concentration of artists in Utah…we are in an interesting in-between, kind of a neighborhood, kind of suburban, but also with a historical main street.” While the BDAC positions itself in an ideal location between some of Utah’s major art hubs, what is even more pertinent is its neighborhood location, ideal for making community access convenient in the heart of Bountiful. To Ehrgott, this access is pivotal. “The accessibility I’m thinking about is how I foster contemporary living artists who are making really interesting and thoughtful work right now, but in a way that the people in our immediate surroundings can enjoy, understand it, and not be intimidated by it.” The answer lies in Ehrgott’s vision for the center’s expansion.

“I hope in three years or so we can turn into a museum, with a museum accreditation,” Ehrgott says. She plans for the center to host artist panels, workshop opportunities, and more curated exhibitions. The BDAC recently welcomed its first-ever curated exhibition in the main gallery, which previously housed work by a single artists or artist groups. It continues to host individual artist exhibitions in two adjacent galleries (see a review of Hunter Bailey’s Shield Your Eyes here) and its downstair gallery is dedicated to partnerships with local community organizations. “If you come in once every couple of months you are going to see brand new work,” she says of the center’s rotating exhibition schedule. The center also provides a stage for performers, which accommodates two Steinway pianos.

Paradigms (A Unified Art Show), in the BDAC’s Underground Gallery, features work from TURN Community Services. Image by Shawn Rossiter.

To meet her visions for the future, Ehrgott is expanding the museum’s staffing. “We are growing exponentially,” she says. The center recently completed its search for a Development and Membership manager as well as a new educator to create free community programming. It is Ehrgott’s objective at the end of this expansion to grow the center’s staff from four to seven members. “The BDAC has a great way of attracting very passionate and very knowledgable creative people.”

If one thing is clear for Ehrgott, it’s that aiming high isn’t just a habit, it’s a standard. “I want to remind artists that we are here. We are interested in contemporary art and we want to support artists in their early career, or emerging artists,”. The BDAC’s doors are open, welcoming artists of all backgrounds and mediums to thrive under Erhott’s visionary directorship. “I think that my ambitions are achievable, I just have to rally the people around me to help me achieve them.”

Avery Greig

Avery Greig always has something to contribute. Whether lost in an art exhibition, meandering in downtown salt lake, or haunting a museum, she always has something to say when it comes to art. With her BA in Art History from the University of Utah, she loves sharing her passions for art and writing wrapped up in one.