6/16 2023 SLC Mayor’s Artist Awards Honors Community-Building Artists and Arts Programming

Mayor Erin Mendenhall has announced the winners of the 2023 Mayor’s Artists Awards, which will be presented live at the Festival Stage at Library and Washington Square, in conjunction with the Utah Arts Festival on Friday, June 23 at 7 p.m. The Mayor’s Artist Award was created in 1992 to honor artists and arts organizations who have deeply enriched the cultural landscape of Salt Lake City.

Chitrakaavya Dance
Chitrakaavya Dance is a Salt Lake City-based non-profit that conceptualizes movement as visual poetry.  Artistic Director, Srilatha Singh, has a Ph.D. in Mathematics in 3-manifold topology, which deals with geometry of spaces and the same fascination with geometry is imbued in her passion for Indian Classical Dance. She enjoys choreographing to unexplored themes, and teaching and presenting history, mythology, rhythm, mathematics, poetry, and theatre, all through the medium of Bharatanatyam. Chitrakaavya Dance fosters innovation and excellence in this dance form, and nurtures inter-cultural conversations using the medium of performing arts, to educate, elevate and entertain.

Kilby Court
Established in 1999, Kilby Court is Salt Lake City’s longest running all ages venue, and widely appreciated as a springboard stage for beginning local & touring artists alike. Kilby Court is located at the end of a small street named Kilby Court which begins at 700 S and about 350 W. Their DIY, garage-style atmosphere encourages close artist-crowd interaction, with the same intimacy as having a show in one’s own backyard. They have hosted acts such as Doja Cat, Phoebe Bridgers, The Backseat Lovers, Death Cab for Cutie, The Head & The Heart, and many more.

Latoya Cameron
Latoya Cameron (she/her) is an actor, singer, writer, and director. She is an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Dramaturg at Salt Lake Acting Company. As an actor, she has worked at theatre companies such as Pioneer Theatre Company, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Salt Lake Acting Company, and Plan-B Theatre Company. As a Change Leader, she raises her voice for Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and other marginalized groups within her community. Latoya is part of the 2022-23 National Leaders of Color Fellows, where she continues to be an advocate and activist for inclusion, representation, and equity in the arts.

Nan Seymour
As poet-in-residence on Antelope Island, Nan Seymour led day-and-night vigils on behalf of the imperiled Great Salt Lake throughout the last two Utah State legislative sessions. During those winter weeks she assembled irreplaceable, a collective love letter to the lake containing over 400 voices. Her story lake woman leaving was awarded the 2022 Alfred Lambourne prize. Nan advocates for Rights of Nature, legally defensible personal rights for ecosystems. Her poetry proclaims their inherent right to live, flourish, and naturally evolve. Nan works to repair the breach between humans and the rest of the sentient and singing earth.

Youth Theatre at the U
Youth Theatre at the University of Utah is a program that empowers youth to skillfully engage in the performing arts to explore their creativity, connect with their community, and think critically about the world. With a strong focus on collaboration, students at YTU embark on a hands-on journey within the classroom, rehearsal spaces, and live performances. Through these immersive experiences, they develop invaluable principles, techniques, and skills that foster personal and artistic growth. At Youth Theatre, the transformative power of theater takes center stage, enabling young people to shine brightly and leave a lasting impact on audiences near and far.

(from the press release)

Horacio Rodriguez

6/15 Bountiful Davis Art Center Announces 2023-2024 Artists in Residence

Horacio Rodriguez is an artist and educator originally from Houston, Texas.”My work is about the many borders I have crossed in my life. I carry many of these borders with me in my memories and produce work about these physical and psychological borders. As a product of multiple cultures and identities, my art is used as a vehicle to explore the creation of my personal narrative within the hybrid cultures of the borderlands”. Horacio has shown his work extensively both nationally and internationally.

Terrel VanLeeuwen lives and works in Sandy, Utah.His artwork has been displayed in Museums, Universities, Galleries, and One man shows throughout Utah. Terrel produces large black and white drawings using Conte Crayon or Charcoal mounted on Maple panels. In the ongoing series of flowers, he is exploring the different stages of life, from the beginning to the to the inevitable end.

David Ammon Downs, is a Utah based artist from Kaysville. In the fall he will be attending UtahState University as a freshman to continue his studies in art. He began his interest in art through his grandfather, Michael J. Nelson, who was a talented commercial and fine artist. He took lessons from him before he passed and inspired him to create. He’s very interested in the human form and how body gestures and facial expressions show emotion.

6/8 SOUTHWEST CONTEMPORARY: Curator Profile: Jessica Kinsey at Southern Utah Museum of Art

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, located on the University of Oklahoma campus, boasts a 40,000-square-foot exhibition space and a storied global art collection. It’s here where Jessica Kinsey received a hands-on approach to curatorial practice and museum administration, skills she would foray to her current role as executive director of the Southern Utah Museum of Art in Cedar City.

SUMA is, like the Fred Jones Jr. Museum, an on-campus art center affiliated with Southern Utah University, a space that is “the sort of building that you could drop in a big city like Chicago or Los Angeles, and it wouldn’t be out of place,” Kinsey says in a recent Zoom call with Southwest Contemporary. Indeed, the sleek modernist design of the space that’s less than a decade old is not one which Cedar City residents may be accustomed.

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Richard Engar

6/2 HOLLADAY JOURNAL: Museum exhibits scale models and super-realism paintings of local artist of the month Richard Engar

The R.C. Engar Scale Model Museum and Studio opened its doors in Bountiful to the public in January 2021. Founded by Holladay resident Richard Engar, an accomplished scale model building artist and super-realism painter, the 900-square-foot museum exhibits more than 300 scale model airplanes and cars primarily crafted by Engar. The walls of the museum are covered with over 400 national, regional and state model-building awards in addition to local awards for Engar’s highly illusionistic landscape paintings.

“The whole thing about painting is fooling the eye with brush strokes,” Engar said. “One little area on a painting may take me two to three hours to complete. The way I paint is to use photographs on my computer. My rule is, in order to have a feeling for what I’m painting, I have to have visited the place I’m going to paint. I particularly enjoy landscapes. The 12-by-18 Wasatch Peaks painting took me 42 hours to complete. The 8-by-10 paintings take about 80 hours.”

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15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.