Two decades ago, it seemed as though every artist felt compelled to respond to the events of 9/11. Twenty years later, not so many had something to say about the Covid-19 pandemic. Two locally showing artists who did both used water to represent a shapeshifting threat not just […]
“I think flowers represent our universal desire to appear like we have our crap together,” observes Emily Fox King, whose majestic floral still life paintings in oil on canvas declare that Spring has sprung at Phillips Gallery – while outside, Nature waffles between snowstorms and 80 degrees. “These […]
There’s something unusual about the paintings of Melinda and Joe Ostraff: something that even though never seen before, seems familiar. A work like “Tide Pool #1” isn’t just a bunch of colors arranged in a balanced, dynamic composition. The parts, a folded pink veil with a hole through […]
If you have ever been to an exhibit of (even slightly) heterogeneous works and found yourself wishing the artist had leaned more into one direction rather than another, you know the feeling. It’s a presumptuous one, the desire to tell an artist what direction she should follow, but […]
Veera Kasicharernvat stands tall, though not rigid. As he moves about his studio, weaving between press and table and bookshelves, his movements are supple, purposeful. Quick with a smile, his is a quiet, joyful presence. The energy he brings to this space, where he paints and prints and […]
Connie Borup’s decision to foreground water in her current work is timely, given the combination of threats coming from drought, the draining of the aquifers, the unequal division of a dwindling supply, and the ongoing fight over rights to it, all contributing to unprecedented water insecurity. But it’s […]
Susan Kirby loves Mexico — so much so that her last vacation there lasted six years. I mean, she bought a house (“a modern one”) in San Miguel de Allende, adopted two Mexican cats, Frida (smile) and Brigit, then settled in and just painted. Well, she took tango […]
I entered Phillips Gallery last week with a little shiver of anticipation: there’s a solo show by Maureen O’Hara Ure, one of the most original and interesting artists working in Utah today. And I was going to get to talk to her about it. Art, for O’Hara Ure, […]
There is a perplexing mix of styles in the landscape show at Phillips through March 11th: stark collages by Liberty Blake and scenic works by Joe Carter don’t blend particularly well on the walls of the Main Gallery and disprove the usual idea that opposites can be attractively […]
Edward Bateman’s latest work makes manifest the adage that one can create mountains out of molehills — molehills made from little bits of plastic and representing real-life Utah mountains. The artist provides small models of his molehills cum mountains (or is it the reverse?) at Phillips Gallery, where a fine […]
Hadley Rampton, who paints en plein air accompanied by her dog, Phoebe, primarily in the Rocky Mountain wilderness she loves but also (sans dog) in town squares and picturesque alleyways around the world, learned a couple new lessons about (and from) Utah’s scenic backcountry during the Pandemic: that […]
Downy Doxey-Marshall introduces the baker’s dozen large oil paintings in Immerse, her current show in the Phillips’ Dibble Gallery, with a twice-relevant quotation from Pablo Picasso: The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. The key here is “washing,” a word that […]
In “Charity,” a clichéd old man — straw hat, glasses, cane, bag of bird seed — stands in shallow water at the beach, feeding a large gull that hovers in midair to take seed from his open hand, both seemingly oblivious to the wave: a wall of water […]
Utah artists like what they do. If any of them feels tortured, they’ve kept it to themselves. Some see their art as a prayer, others feel like telling a story. Some see art as a challenge to take on. A popular gallery like Phillips can pull together three […]
The ladies and gentlemen at Phillips had a grand time bringing Spring to the main gallery for the current show – it hits you right in the solar plexus as you walk in and leaves you, well, hopeful. They do it with color, of course: screaming tangerine walls […]
