Before collaborative was compelling marketing it was embedded in the making of concert dance. In the ’30s Martha Graham worked with Isamu Noguchi on Frontier and he went on to design the seat for Appalachian Spring. Merce Cunningham, who performed as “the Revivalist” in that work, went on to have collaborations from Andy […]
In a novel and effective move, each piece, and each movement in the case of the Brahms, was prefaced by a reading of lines of poetry, or lines from a play, or in the case of the Glinka, a narrative of a brief portion of the composer’s life in the composer’s words. Three actors/actresses from Salt Lake Acting Company performed these readings. They were Olivia Custodio, Robert Scott Smith, and Alexis Baigue.
Growing up in a blue-collar family on the rural outskirts of Palm Springs, Calif., Russell Wrankle never imagined that one day his life would revolve around the arts. That all changed in college, when he took a ceramics class and was instantly hooked. “I guess it was something […]
We’ve all been guilty of it — visiting an exotic locale, taking a few shots of its iconic attractions, and feeling like we’ve captured the essence of the place. If we’re alert, we come home and realize that everyone else has a shot of Venice’s gondolas from St. Mark’s Square, or the winding streets of Montmartre (and that all the people in the shots are tourists) and wonder if there wasn’t something more to be discovered. Our backyard is such a locale for millions of tourists from across the country, many of whom visit the national parks as quickly as we might Rialto and St. Mark’s. Those of us who live here, though, know what the place looks like from within — the myriad attractions tucked away into cliffs and canyons far from the motorist’s gaze…
Public art matters. That is the takeaway message from viewing Patricia Johanson’s monumental public artwork in Sugar House, Salt Lake City. It matters, and in the hands of a seasoned and passionate artist, it matters deeply and is successfully translated to the public. Johanson’s environmental work —with the Echo Canyon portion completed this June—not only addresses many audiences and their interests, it’s a work that takes us on a journey from the macrocosm of history and time to the microcosms embedded in her work; from natural beauty to environmental sustainability to cultural heritage.
Our country is increasingly becoming a place of hyphenated identities, in which we speak of ourselves in relation to the countries or continents our ancestors came from — African-American, Italian-American, Korean-American. This increased focus on cultural and ethnic identity is double-edged: the hyphen acts as both a bond, […]
Aesthetic theory has always been a subset of Philosophy, a body of human thought that modern science has essentially rendered obsolete. The problem is that philosophers, be they Plato or Kant, want to legislate reality: to say, not Is this beautiful? but rather, What is beauty? The process […]
It’s hard to predict what thoughts and experiences will affect an artist’s work, but major life changes — birth, death, marriage, divorce — almost always surface in the work of creative individuals, whether explicitly or implicitly. One such example can be found this month at the Sweet Branch […]
A new residency program in northeastern Nevada, just miles from the Sun Tunnels, offers artists an opportunity for work and reflection in a remote desert setting.
The gallery titles this show Round Trip, a reference to life’s having taken Haworth from western America to Britain and back. Aside from the two bracelets and “Jewels and Ring,” a freestanding set of fabric jewels, Haworth, if she chose to follow Cindy Sherman’s example, might well call most of the works “film stills.”
Today’s column is on a subject that I encountered years ago and was recently reminded of — avoiding the cartoon look in a painting. This may seem like a weird thing to write about, but it is a look I happened upon once or twice out in the […]
There’s a whirlwind of artistic activity along the Wasatch Back this year: a large metal piece called “Urban Tornado” by Salt Lake City’s Lenka Konopasek has been installed at the Summit County Building in Kimball Junction and Riverton artist Tim Little’s assemblage “Fly Utah” is in front of […]
While most fans agree “The Empire Strikes Back” is the best film in the original Star Wars trilogy, few of them would suggest watching the film in isolation. It would be like attending only Part Two of Shakespeare’s trio of plays on Henry V: a middle with no […]
Perhaps the most important question that should be asked of any new work of art is this: So What? A work can do all sorts of things, some of them even unprecedented, but unless doing so serves a purpose, the accomplishment may be no more than a stunt. […]
Though you won’t expect to find the owner of a Harley, custom-finished with devilish skulls, running in similar circles as the owner of a delicately rendered redrock landscape, they both may be getting their art from the same source: Brian Lindley. After a decade working as an […]
Just as one would not wisely attend Shakespeare’s Henry V as a primer for an exam on franco-anglo relations in the 15th-century, do not come to Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, on stage this summer at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, to better understand the life of a favorite classical composer. […]
by Will Thompson It was terrifically hot, but so were the bands; the fountains were cool, as was the jazz, and the evening air refreshing – if you lasted that long with the sun beating down at this year’s Utah Arts Festival. Still, artist and gallery owner Karen […]
When gallery director Susan Meyer tells you Meyer Gallery is celebrating its golden anniversary, it’s hard to believe. Fifty years ago, the ski resort designed to rejuvenate what was a declining mining town was barely a year old, tourists were only beginning to trickle in and […]
In bringing a cross section of performance to a broad public, the Utah Arts Festival fulfills an important role each summer. Dance is often accused of being one of the more insulated art forms, as audiences find difficulty in analyzing nonverbal ideas and, more specifically, doing so at […]
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
Recent Comments