Salt Lake City Honors Five with Mayor’s Artist Awards

Salt Lake City has named Artes de México en Utah, Cheryl Ann Cluff, Russel Albert Daniels, David Ericson and Laura Allred Hurtado recipients of the 2026 Mayor’s Artist Awards. The five were recognized Oct. 13 at Finch Lane Gallery in the Art Barn.

Established in 1992 and administered by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the awards recognize artists, organizations and cultural leaders who have contributed to the city’s cultural life. This year’s recipients come from notably different corners of that community.

Founded in 2010, Artes de México en Utah has developed arts and literary programming centered on Mexican and Latino heritage, including Born from Corn, Sor Juana Poetry, LatinArte and filmexico.

Cheryl Ann Cluff, co-founder and longtime managing director of Plan-B Theatre, has helped guide the company since 1991 while working as a sound designer and director and originating the company’s RADIO HOUR series with KUER’s RadioWest.

Photographer and multidisciplinary artist Russel Albert Daniels explores overlooked histories of the American West, particularly Indigenous experiences. His ongoing La Cautiva project examines the history and legacy of colonial-era captivity through portraiture and landscape.

David Ericson, founder of David Ericson Fine Art, has spent nearly five decades exhibiting, researching, appraising and advocating for Utah art and has become one of the state’s leading authorities on its early artists.

Laura Allred Hurtado, executive director of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, was recognized for both her curatorial work and her leadership at UMOCA. Since taking the helm in 2019, she has overseen a financial and organizational restructuring of the museum while continuing a curatorial practice concerned with gender, belief, identity and place.

Carel Brest van Kempen Hits Double Digits

Utah artist Carel Brest van Kempen has become the first artist to receive 10 Awards of Excellence from the Society of Animal Artists. His painting “Vertical Displacement or Bye-Bye American Pika” received the honor at the 66th annual Art and the Animal exhibition at the Elliott Museum in Stuart, Florida.

The Award of Excellence is the Society’s highest honor, and five are enough to earn an artist master status. Brest van Kempen’s 10th puts him ahead of Robert Bateman and Leo Osborne, who have received nine each, and Guy Coheleach and Carl Brenders, with eight.

And he didn’t leave Florida with just one award. “Vertical Displacement” also became the inaugural recipient of the Diane D. Mason Award for Outstanding Creative Concept, named for the sculptor and former Society of Animal Artists president. The recognition comes a year after Brest van Kempen received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

A native Utahn known for detailed acrylic paintings that combine close observation of animal life with frequently surreal compositions, Brest van Kempen has exhibited on six continents. He is currently at work on a comprehensive field guide to the birds of Utah.

Emma Earle, “The Torchbearers”

Emma Earle Takes Best of Show at Springville

Emma Earle took Best of Show for “The Torchbearers” at the Springville Museum of Art’s 40th Annual Spiritual & Religious Art of Utah exhibition.

Earle is a Provo-based artist and recent BYU graduate with a BFA in illustration whose work ranges across portraiture, landscape and narrative painting. Her spiritual work draws heavily on scripture, ancient stories and archetypes, using a recurring vocabulary of symbols—including apples for wisdom, sparrows for spirit and flames for intuition.

That last symbol makes “The Torchbearers” particularly characteristic of a young artist interested in the ability of familiar, even ancient, images to communicate spiritual ideas to contemporary viewers.

Bridgette Meinhold Gives Park City’s New Film Festival Its Look

When the inaugural Park City Film Festival opens Oct. 23, it will do so with an image created by a familiar Park City artist. Bridgette Meinhold was tapped to design the poster for the new festival, scheduled for Oct. 23–25.

Meinhold’s watercolor design spells out the festival’s name in loose lettering above a field of translucent, overlapping circles moving through yellows, oranges, greens and blues. The festival is producing the poster as a limited-edition collectible.

Meinhold will sign posters at Gallery MAR, 436 Main Street, on Sunday, Oct. 25, from 3 to 5 p.m. Posters will also be available during the festival.

MiXeD MeDiA

October 2 — Utah Artists Look to the Great Salt Lake
The Salt Lake Tribune visits an exhibition at Salt Lake City’s Sorensen Unity Center featuring work created through Friends of Great Salt Lake’s annual Alfred Lambourne Arts Program. The program invites artists and writers to respond to the Great Salt Lake, and this year’s exhibition includes photography, poetry, music and participatory work examining both the lake and our relationship to it.
Read more at The Salt Lake Tribune →

October 6 — Building an Arts Bridge Between Utah and Mexico
In Southwest Contemporary, Ana Estrada profiles Salt Lake City arts organizer Peter Hay and the story behind ProArtes México, the organization he founded with Mexican choreographer and arts administrator Stephanie García. The piece traces the personal and professional relationship that grew out of Hay’s encounters with Mexico City’s arts community and developed into an ongoing effort to create meaningful exchange between artists in Mexico and the United States.
Read more at Southwest Contemporary →

Mixed Media

Links to visual arts articles in a variety of media including newspapers, magazine, blogs, tv and radio.