For instance, I hold life, pressing thunder, another breakdown and through A simple whisper darling I press the trigger on the limbs of another day. —Nicole LaRue, “For Instance” Poetry is an art form, but one that essentially stands in opposition to visual art. Calligraphy might be shown […]
“…My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood/To say as I said then!” The speaker is Cleopatra, but the words come from Shakespeare, who invented more words and phrases than any other English speaker. He intends his Egyptian queen to mean in her […]
Throughout the Covid pandemic, public conversation made much of the experience of isolation. Recent art exhibits, several reviewed on this site, included interpretations of solitude and of its consequences. Still, for such a commonplace source of suffering, it didn’t seem all that well illustrated — perhaps because it […]
“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. […]
Surgeons and airline pilots probably shouldn’t pretend to know more than they do. But is it wrong when an art critic does? After all, what we do is hardly dangerous, or even, for that matter, important. But it may still matter, if for example an artist knows something […]
There are three levels at work in Bea Hurd’s It Was Their Third Cup of Coffee. At the bottom is physiology: the human body and the human brain, each in competition for the same resources. It’s well known that while the brain makes up only 2% of body […]
Walking into the small gallery at the Bountiful Davis Art Center where Paper Bandages is installed feels like departing on a road trip so early in the day that it’s still dark out. Silhouettes and familiar shapes can be made out at first, but as inky darkness gradually […]
On the one hand, the term “orb” might mean nothing more than a sphere, which is what McKenna Anderl, recently the Junior Artist in Residence at BDAC, chose to paint on a salvaged dictionary page. But then again, the word, primarily used in phrases like “the orb and […]
Faced with Kristina Lenzi’s 11 wicked caricatures at Bountiful Davis Art Center, “subtle” might not be the first word that comes to mind. Such large, distorted heads sitting atop long necks that grow out of bodies so tiny a viewer may overlook them — it all feels less […]
We’ve come a long way from the days when abstract expressionist Ad Reinhardt, famous for justifying his paintings in witty cartoons, explained that a sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at one of those paintings. The popular admission of women artists to […]
In her current show at Bountiful Davis Art Center, Marissa Albrecht uses two words that won’t be found in most dictionaries, though it’s not hard to grasp their meanings. One, “Restruction,” is the exhibition’s title; the other, “curation,” appears in her statement and names a step in her […]
One of the great stories of European art concerns Leonardo da Vinci’s unfinished masterpiece, “The Adoration of the Magi,” which was abandoned, left lying face down in a stable, and nearly lost. Eventually it was recovered, repaired, and hangs today in the Uffizi Gallery. Note that it was […]
While discussion of a book often begins with a quotation, talking about art more often requires a description. The graphic art of Nancy Steele-Makasci, which grabs viewers by their eyes but speaks to them as well through the written word, requires both. A stark, high-contrast face with large, […]
Brian Boulton is a man with the courage of his convictions. By this, I mean that, having chosen to work in either reclaimed or man-made materials and to produce non-representational sculpture, he’s resisted the temptation to slip in the occasional pretty bauble or a helpful similarity to some […]
Even though Rachel Henriksen and Carrie Everett sign their art works individually, they show them together, thereby demonstrating a common purpose. Their statement, signed by them both, reads rather like a research proposal: “to understand and process … the physical and emotional transformations associated with womanhood.” Considering how […]
Ever since history’s first public art gallery opened in the city offices — or Uffizi — of Florence in the 1580s, a tempest has raged in the teapot of art concerning what kind of signage should accompany a display. A minority has always detested those informative wall cards […]
One artist I can never get enough of is Alison Neville, so when I saw that she had curated a room full of art at BDAC, nothing could dissuade me: least of all the advance photos. The photos matter because the show in question, CreepyCute, contemplated a familiar, […]
From time to time an artist introduces a new material or technique, typically embedding it in a network of traditional, dependable approaches. In The Availability of Secret Information, Marc T. Wise blows away such caution with a plethora of stunning innovations, each a thrill to the eye […]
