There is something to be said about experience, about story. Every person has their own and no story is exactly alike. Yet, somehow, all stories have the power to connect us. The human experience, though unique, shows evidence of a life lived. Stories allow people to relate to […]
Out There includes 17 artists, most of whom will be familiar to Modern West’s regulars. They all appear frequently, and most have some work in the collection, giving their audience a chance to witness their gradual, and occasionally sudden evolution. Two themes that made for new work were the ongoing environmental crisis, which has only grown worse while almost nothing is done by those who could and ought to help, and the pandemic, with its associated social isolation and continuing controversy, in spite of mortality remaining high.
Nathan Florence converses much the way he paints: in-depth with lots of color; layered with nuance but an abundance of honesty; moments of intensity with an overall cheerfulness. He is a fun interview. But try chatting with Florence about his work and you will immediately be turned down […]
Lenka Konopasek, a Utah artist who emigrated to Utah from the Czech Republic, has documented disasters in her art involving humans and nature in many ways: tornados, mega storms, explosions, fires, even personal accidents; and yet when Modern West Gallery invited their artists to submit work concerned with […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Art is play. It’s also work, hard work: work so challenging many people assume they can’t do it. But that’s because they think it’s nothing but work. Better they thought it was play. To be sure, Mike Whiting works very hard on his art. The precision demanded by […]
In this identity-conscious age, people have found many new ways to identify themselves. You may find yourself in all sorts of cultural activities. Each of the seven artists participating in Modern West Fine Arts’ current exploration of the theme of identity, titled You May Find Yourself, has a […]
Emily Hawkins is rummaging around the flat files at Salt Lake City’s Saltgrass Printmakers. She’s looking for sheets of Mylar. “That’s too thick,” Saltgrass director Stefanie Dykes tells her, though she’s not quite sure what Hawkins is looking for. “We use that one for printing,” she says when […]
An influential art gallery doesn’t just record the history of art; they help make it. An excellent example is the current, primarily painting exhibition at Modern West, shared between gallery director and painter Shalee Cooper and Navajo sculptor and painter Sheldon Harvey. When the gallery’s founder and guiding […]
Schenck’s Utah: A Land Less Traveled, Billy Schenck’s astonishing all-landscape solo exhibit — a first in his successful 52-year career as a Western artist — is already half sold out, says Modern West Fine Art’s director Shalee Cooper, who conceived the strictly landscape motif and convinced the artist of […]
The Salt Lake Engineering Works, built in 1904 as a machine shop, warehouse and foundry on Salt Lake’s near West Side, has a new tenant that’s adding some extra class to the increasingly artsy neighborhood. Modern West Fine Art has left Second South and Second East and settled […]
