The Utah Watercolor Society’s Spring Open Show at the Visual Art Institute in South Salt Lake

So many of Utah’s storied art venues have lost their homes, or are in danger of losingthem, that you could be excused for thinking we must have too many of them. Why are they among the first places developers think of when looking for somewhere to build? The charm and class that come along with repurposing an older building cannot be built for anything near the price. At least one nationally-known Utah artist I know is watching as the industrial-grade neighborhood where he’s had his studio, seemingly forever, is rapidly gentrifying, and he knows there’s nowhere left like it anywhere around, should he have to move. Looking around his expanse of affordable workspace, he shakes his head and says when the redevelopment reaches him, any day now, he’s done for.

Yet there’s always hope, even if, as Kafka suggests, not always for us. As fast as places disappear, someone will set out to replace them. This month, two relatively recent examples have worthy shows on offer, and they’re only a block or so apart on either side of the Trax line around 2900 South, in the easy-parking part of town.

The Visual Arts Institute’s new home has the kind of flexible, expansive space arts people dream of. Entering up the ramp on the north side, visitors are greeted by the friendly duo of Jessica and her Black Lab, Parker. They’ll offer a tour of the classroom, labs, and studios that lie beyond, each with a selection of student work confirming the caliber of their graduates. Right now, the main space is the goal, where the Utah Watercolor Society’s Spring Open Show is currently on view.

Finding the right size gallery for any exhibition can be challenging, especially for a show that approaches 100 separate artists. Alert visitors will notice that select works bear a label from the Utah Division of Arts and Museums saying they were chosen for the traveling version of this show, which in order to fit venues along the way must be smaller. Yet the Visual Arts Institute has no trouble providing space, and in a room without windows or other inconvenient artifacts of multiple uses.

Carl Purcell, “Reid’s Table Saw”

Doreen Hanson, “Costa Rican Urraca”

As always, a few of these eloquent and technically superb paintings will have to stand in for the rest. On a personal note, my now-retired department chair at Snow College, Carl Purcell, took home a first prize for “Reid’s Table Saw,” his depiction of a classic, rural Utah carpentry rig. I showed a snap of it to a student of his from almost 20 years ago, without hinting at what it was, and she immediately identified Purcell as the artist. There must be hundreds of his students around the state, probably including some in this show, yet somehow the Utah community just doesn’t generate clones.

Many, probably most artists travel in order to feed their visual appetites. Landscapes make up the most apparent gains, as JoAn Ekenstam Coon demonstrates in “Wandering the Side Streets in Amsterdam.” On the other hand, Doreen Hanson’s “Costa Rican Urraca” exemplifies the more subtle changes that new horizons open for deeper exploration. Yet even at home, where Nan Gray witnessed a mundane moment of profound discovery, we’re surrounded by an infinite number of sights worthy to become works of art.

A selection of works from the watercolor show at the Visual Art Institute

Meanwhile, Colour Maisch and Jorge Rojas have had several months to settle in at Material, their joint studio–cum–gallery complex a short distance east. Here they have a variety of workshops as befits their wide variety of approaches, while the front of the building is given over to the gallery. These are the sort of intimate rooms that are, paradoxically, harder to find than large ones, yet far more valuable when the art so clearly calls for close viewing. The current show, BYU professor Peter Everett’s Hypnagogic, exemplifies that kind of art. Whether it’s his hand-mixed paints, his custom-made mulberry paper, or his spontaneous application, close viewing will make a difference.

But there’s also more to it. Granted, in the front room, where as many as six framed paintings are arranged as a group, the experience is more familiar. But it’s in the back room, where the works are slightly larger than the viewer, images running six or seven feet tall and two to six feet wide, that the show’s theme really benefits from the total immersion afforded. Anyone who’s ever been told by a uniformed guard that they’re too close to the art will appreciate that at Material the curatorial ethos supports the one thing that matters most in art: the connection between he artist and the viewer that is created by the work.

Six works by Peter Everett grouped together in his exhibit, Hypnagogic, at Material

So, what is Hypnagogic about? Perhaps the most useful thing to know about these images is that they’re not, at least on a fundamental level, abstractions. That is to say, they’re not reductions from nature. Neither are they concrete art, where the artist spontaneously generates forms, whether from the imagination or somatic gestures such as spontaneous brushstrokes. Apparently, they are, at least at the outset, literal representations of things he’s actually seen, which are patterns, noise, and possibly so much more, generated in his optical and cerebral, neural networks.

A large, untitled painting show the power of an immersive, hypnogogic image.

Of course everyone has such experiences. Stand up too quickly, rub your eyes (gently, please!), pay attention to what you see with your eyes closed, waking or falling asleep, or one of the richest sources for many: while meditating. Some pay no attention, but those people are not artists. Everett starts, or at least started, with such patterns and then seems to have worked with them, varied them, sometimes overlaying one on another to see what he make consciously in response to what his senses make.

There’s a precedent for this activity in cultures that foreground meditative states and activities. One of the results is a form of mandala, which is intended as a kind of seed, to be focused on and contemplated in order to stimulate further exploration and contemplation. Everett’s approach, which does without the specific or dogmatic intrusions that often occur, is that of a visual artist seeking a naturally occurring design source located in his own consciousness.

These two galleries are not currently members of the Gallery Stroll, and probably never will be. But 15 Bytes pays attention, and as the local scene undergoes its own climate change, they will be well worth knowing.

Utah Watercolor Society’s Spring Open Show, Visual Art Institute, South Salt Lake, through June 14

Peter Everett: Hypnagogic, Material, South Salt Lake, through June 28

All images courtesy of the author

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.