Modern West Fine Art is no stranger to meticulous curation, yet their latest exhibition manages to exceed even already high expectations. A Woven History, where each artwork sits in thoughtful conversation with the others, centers nine female artists, exploring the boundaries of their work in relation to womanhood […]
When we think of ceramics, we often picture a thrown vessel, a hand-built sculpture or maybe even our favorite artisan coffee mug—weighty, functional and tactile. But in Porcelain Threads, Dara Hartman turns that notion inside out. Her solo exhibition at Modern West strips away any expectation of heaviness […]
It’s well known that sensations like flavors, odors, and sights tend to be unpleasant on first encounter—a mechanism that protects individuals from unknown dangers—but that with further experience they may come to seem neutral, even positively delightful. Captured in a single image, the phenomenon might take the form […]
Tears are made of salt water. Grief is love. Whatever I have come to know as love and grief, I have learned from Great Salt Lake. -Terry Tempest Williams The fate of Great Salt Lake is hardly more than a footnote in the longer story of how immigrant […]
Featuring ten artists, including five guest artists and five whom the gallery represents, The Modern West at Modern West Fine Art hones in on personal ties to the state of Utah and the interconnection of the West and individual identity. The exhibition both combines the physical body with […]
Since losing a print in Santa Fe seven years ago (a single print by a Russian artist; it disappeared after being left at the foot of a bench, across from an art museum), I always feel a pang of pleasure/sadness/delight when I see a framed print on any wall. There it is, I think, made it to its destination. Where it should be.
If you go to SaltGrass Printmakers (412 South 700 West), you can find one.
Aïsha Lehmann emerged on the art scene rather dramatically last October with Mixed, a sensational exhibition at Finch Lane Gallery. Mixed featured nine large portrait figures, and while “mixed media” may no longer be a useful term, due to its nearly universal use by artists today, in this […]
If you’re being followed or navigating a dangerous place, your natural defense mechanisms activate and start tuning. These mechanisms are buried in our mind and body, just as they are in any other domesticated animal. Colors get brighter, movements slow down, and you can shift from terror to […]
Over just the past 40 years, the number of people in the nation’s prisons and jails has increased a staggering 500%, for a total of 2.2 million people currently behind bars, according to The Sentencing Project. Agnes “Aggie” Gund — art collector, philanthropist and President Emerita of MOMA […]
Rolling into the new year, Liberty Blake is working on collages for a landscape show at Modern West in March as well as some smaller works for the UK organization Art on a Postcard, as part of their upcoming International Women’s Day auction event. She’s also one of […]
In the words of Derek Zoolander, 200 South is “so hot right now.” It’s true, 2nd South, like much of Salt Lake City, is pretty hot right now. On any given night the stretch between 1st and 2nd East along 2nd South is buzzing with activity. It’s no […]
What if you loved England or Japan, and you could no longer live there, it isn’t/wasn’t possible: you are marooned in America, land of tea dumped into a Boston harbor by men dressed like Indian braves. You might paint multiple crash-courses of teacups, sunlight spilling over them, […]
[dropcap]Almost[/dropcap] from the beginning, Diane Stewart’s Modern West Fine Art has been evolving away from the cowboys, American Indians and Western landscapes — however jazzed up or modernized — that threatened to define it at its inception. Gradual at first, the process has picked up steam in recent […]
Something remarkable, though it shouldn’t have been, took place in the American Southwest in the years following the Second World War. Consider these three names: Georgia O’Keeffe, Agnes Martin, Beatrice Mandelman. Each of these artists resisted and ultimately rejected the New York mainstream. Each created original and highly […]
Anyone who has lost a solitary loved one can relate to the situation: a household full of objects — clothes, books, photographs, dishware — too sentimental to simply throw away, not precious enough to keep. Are the clothes old enough that they’ve come back in style? Maybe one of […]
Prolific Utah-based artist Nathan Florence has never been averse to change (as we’ve noted before in 15Bytes) but his new exhibit leads us further into his ongoing process of exploration and the resultant progress. While many artists will try to demonstrate their progress in leaps, often pivoting […]
“Mannequin Defectors I” Much has been written about Jann Haworth, but two things seem customary to mention. One is her formative involvement with Pop art, which began in England and with which she still identifies. This biographical fact might otherwise escape her American audience, since the substantive work […]
Exhibiting at Modern West Fine Art this month, the traditionally trained painter Ben Steele chooses subjects that hark back to a universal and nostalgic American childhood. From Kennewick, Washington, and educated first at the University of Utah and then at the apprenticeship program in Helper—under the instruction of […]
