[dropcap]When[/dropcap] you think of “Mormon music” what typically comes to mind? A world-renowned chorus of 360 middle-aged balding and white-haired members? Traditional hymns sung at a slightly-slower-than-comfortable pace in chapels punctuated by the cries of children below the “age of accountability”? Or maybe even songs about popcorn growing […]
[dropcap]When [/dropcap]the towers—there were more than two—of the World Trade Center fell on 9/11, emergency medical personnel anticipated an avalanche of critical injuries. While the survivors on that day were never counted, responders knew from experience what to expect: eight years before, when a bomb exploded beneath one […]
[dropcap]A [/dropcap]sometimes helpful way to conceptualize Modern Art is “old wine in new bottles.” James Joyce, the essential modernist, took a 2,500-year-old epic poem, the “Odyssey,” and repackaged it as a novel—a literary form only a couple of centuries old—that he called “Ulysses,” after the poem’s protagonist, even […]
There isn’t any rule against making art from a personal, as opposed to universal, point of view. Indeed, it could be argued that most good art started out with something private in it that energized the man or woman who made it. But it’s also true that, for […]
[dropcap]In[/dropcap] biology, circumstances—what scientists call “niches”—summon particular organisms into being. So it may have been inevitable that BYU and Snow College, two of the principal breeding grounds of Utah art, would each possess a teacher who is also a prolific artist, a keen student of local culture, a […]
READ LOCAL First represents Utah’s most comprehensive collection of celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This week we bring you an excerpt from Tim Glenn’s 2017 Original Writing Competition First Place novel manuscript, Forever Desolation. Glenn is a historian and museum director living in Green River, Utah. He earned […]
Fluid Picasso-esque metal figures, Mad Max steam-punk vehicles, astronauts basking in the Utah air, and insects the size of your children (Honey, I shrunk the kids!). Take a walk down Broadway to view these identified “Flying Objects”—the works of established and emerging Utah sculpture artists. The ongoing project is […]
Early on in our relationship, Tom Alder had to convince me on an important point: a lack of evidence should not get in the way of a good story. Evidence should be sought, Tom conceded, arguments for plausibility laid out, but ultimately, if nothing disproved a story or […]
Curation is always difficult. It involves hours of work and focus with the added combination of a keen eye and a strong will. More often than not, it means accepting that in the eyes of some you’ll be a hero and a genius, while for others, you might […]
We cross paths with dozens or more people in our communities every day but how often do we take the time to sit down with them and share stories? For Holladay artist Jim McGee the chance to get to know his neighbors came when he applied for and […]
Sometime around 1970, feminist historians began to make all sorts of discoveries about the primacy of artistic and scientific discoveries during what has been called the Enlightenment. Among these was the realization that, just as artists often perform the difficult early stages of gentrification of urban areas, only […]
Though warned early in her career against pursuing a path as a portrait painter or becoming a mother, Mary Sauer has chosen to do both, persevering and following her dreams, no matter the resistance she finds along the way. Her dedication has paid off with her second baby […]
There is a neat taking-off trick here: two of Jennifer Rasmusson’s back-in-time representational paintings are here, separated from her New Abstracts now filling A Gallery’s white-on-white indoor sky-lit courtyard area. The pre-abstract “Collection of Blues” is eye-level; it’s very large; one bloom is the size of your head. […]
Originally, this piece by Greg Ragland was installed in an empty lot in the Central Ninth neighborhood, where the city had helped local residents organize a community garden. Since then, the neighborhood has gone through a revival, so the lot is no longer empty, nor a garden, and the sculptures […]
Whether it is upheld as an integral part of a religious belief system or simply acknowledged as myth by a more secular audience, what took place in the Garden of Eden continues to inform the way Western civilization has come to understand, represent, and feel about the body. […]
The Underwater American Songbook, Rebecca Pyle’s 2018 digital chapbook, is structured around a captivating and engaging conceit: the collection, as Pyle explains in a foreword, is “a body of almost-lyrics about objects found underwater all around New York.” Each of the 10 poems, therefore, focuses on some sunken […]
The past is becoming an increasingly hot topic in the present as scientific and technological advancements have made DNA analysis relatively simple and cheap, and the amassing of historical documents, journals and photos, easily accessible online. These developments have spurred interest in the individual aspect of the past, […]
The gallery on the fourth floor of the City Library includes not only a large interior space but also its exterior walls and the mezzanine-like floor space outside. Normally, it rewards two artists sharing the space. The sculptor Cordell Taylor has taken over all of it, as well […]
Discover the artistic side of Salt Lake City. Over the years, we have reported on and captured the publicly viewable artwork that crops up all over SLC, from the official public art installations to street art and even the strange things that pop up in people’s yards and […]
Stewart Seidman creates expressive acrylic works on canvas and with recycled FedEx envelopes that once served as his paint palettes, transforming everyday materials into compelling contemporary art.
To discover more artists, visit our Utah Artists Directory
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