Imitation Games: Ben Steele at Modern West Fine Art
Exhibiting at Modern West Fine Art this month, the traditionally trained painter Ben Steele chooses subjects that hark back to a universal and nostalgic American childhood. From Kennewick, Washington, and educated first at the University of Utah and then at the apprenticeship program in Helper—under the instruction of […]
A Kind of Deep-felt Sadness: Andy Hoffman’s The Edge and End of Water
This chapbook documents a trip from Utah to Argentina in three brief chapters, each with a poem, an essay, a photograph, and epigraphs taken from the work of poet Pablo Neruda. The first section, “Punta Norte,” describes a wildlife preserve on the Península Valdés in Argentina which is […]
Sarina Villareal’s Pop-Up Gallery on Main Street
From mysterious murals deep inside Paleolithic caves, to movable adornment for Renaissance merchants, art is something malleable, reflective of the space and time in which it exists. Art was one thing when it was made for the magnificent churches of Venice, like San Marco and San Lorenzo, and […]
Feminist Reality, Feminist Mystery: Julie J. Nichols’ Pigs When They Straddle the Air
Some titles, like Many Things Have Happened Since He Died by Elizabeth Dewberry and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, have made me want to read a novel when I know nothing at all about the author and haven’t read a review. The title itself creates a sort of […]
Jumping Naked in the Backyard: Zoe Murdock’s Man in the Mirror explores the interior and exterior worlds of Alzheimer’s
Old age is a terrain most of us have not traveled. We’ve not been there before (and most people think they’ll never get there, either, keeping the reality, as well as the idea, at bay. Except, there are those times when a brush with old age cannot be […]
Living in an Immaterial World: Mike Lee’s Digital Mirror at UMOCA
Mike Lee, an Artist in Residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, describes himself as a product of two world cultures, having split his childhood between rural Japan and Utah. His work bridges these two separate geographical and cultural regions with reference to an elusive third: the […]
Be Wild and Original: Art and Life Burn Bright for Maureen O’Hara Ure
photos by Simon Blundell Maureen O’Hara Ure shares her truth, however whimsical, however wrenching, in mixed media on panel. The incident in “The Night of the Fire,” which is part of Love & Work, her fascinating solo show at Phillips Gallery through Nov. 11, actually occurred in 1978, when […]
Controlled Chaos: Jimmi Toro mixes paintings, songs & videos at Urban Arts Gallery
Jimmi Toro’s fluid line work lays itself gracefully across his paintings. Even in moments of disruption, where the ink spatters or skips, the faces and forms of his creating stare back at us, inviting us into their world. While his work uses a variety of techniques, it is […]
The Hive Series: Profiles in Creative Living
With “The Hive Series,” Utah filmmaker Quincy Boardman has created an outlet for his lifelong passion to “document and aggregate thoughts, opinions, ideas, and inspiration on living a more creative life.” He mixes mini-documentary films with other articles and videos “of innovative inspiration.” In his documentaries he mashes […]
To Reach and Touch: Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen at Michael Berry Gallery
Carel Pieter Brest van Kempen is a Utah native who grew up in Emigration Canyon, but his name invokes the Northern Renaissance: the great scientific and artistic era when Carel Fabritius painted “The Goldfinch,” an ornithological study celebrated in a 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel; and Pieter Bruegel the […]
Installing the Space Between: Stephanie Leitch at The Granary
C.C.A. Christensen painted his most important work, the “Mormon Panorama,” in the mid-1870s. Even though as an immigrant he hadn’t witnessed the persecution and violence central to the stories he gave visual form, it was his dramatic images, in which nature herself seemed to recoil in horror, that […]
Work in Progress: A Conversation with Jann Haworth
Can you name five women artists? What about five women scientists? Mathematicians? Poets?
Jann Haworth couldn’t, and in her new community-sourced mural project, the creative director of The Leonardo set out to investigate and celebrate the accomplishments of women in our lives. The 28-foot long mural – a work in progress – opens this Friday, October 7, in the Street Gallery of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. For our second episode in The 1-5-B podcast, Shawn Rossiter sat down with the artist to discuss the project.
Joe Marotta
Seemingly a bit lost in the 21st century, Joseph Marotta finds a number of things wrong with now; and particularly with here. His photographs explore the concept of time – the way we experience its passing and how that experience now seems to be accelerating. So when […]
Children of the Potato Eaters: Rebecca Campbell at BYU Museum of Art
In “Dig,” a large and very colorful landscape in a portrait format, a middle-aged man, lean and strong from a lifetime of hard work, leans forward from the waist, his bare torso so shiny with sweat it reflects the sky above him. As he digs, the passion of […]
A Nuclear Alphabet for Downwinders: Michael McLane’s Trace Elements
Michael McLane is the man behind the Utah Book Festival, which this month is bringing authors and book lovers together across the state. But he’s also a writer, and in this companion piece to our podcast on Trent Alvey, Amy Brunvand takes a look at McLane’s Elik Press publication Trace Elements: Mapping the Great Basin and its Peripheries.
Trent Alvey’s Atomic Sublime
We introduce our new podcast, The 1-5-B, with an interview with Trent Alvey discussing her work in the exhibit Tourists of the New Sublime at The Granary Art Center in Ephraim.
Identity, Self and Purpose: A Review of Brian Evenson’s The Warren
Human identity can be said to rely on two things: who we are, and what we do. This being and action gives humans purpose. As a Mormon boy growing up in Utah, the knowledge of my ancestors and faith told me who I was, and what I was […]
RDT’s Elan
Repertory Dance Theatre’s season opener, Élan, was an eclectic evening of dance which opened with “Handsfree,” a piece commissioned for Britain’s National Youth Orchestra in 2012. The piece tasks performers with creating rhythms by clapping, stamping, singing and beat-boxing, and RDT’s version draws on the talents of both […]
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