David Dibble has a thing for hay. The Orem painter was raised on a farm in Davis County, Utah, where he was influenced by the landscape from an early age. After graduating with a BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University and graduate work at the Academy of […]
What silent desert landscapes and mirific skyscapes have we missed in the years Martin Blundell spent at his business — at work in the real world — while his artwork lay fallow? Martin Blundell is a tall, quiet man who can please a small crowd with a deep, […]
McGarren Flack is ready to go big. A professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Flack began painting in the fall of 2002, while in the Illustration program at Brigham Young University. After graduation, he pursued an MFA at the University of Utah. Flack, however, says his […]
Before COVID, Madison Donnelly was headed to Yale. Like so much else for so many others, that was put on hold. Donnelly is one of Utah’s more promising young artists. While still working on her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Utah, she earned a juror’s award […]
Jerrin Wagstaff spends a lot of time on the internet, and watching TV. But he’s no couch potato. It’s work. The BYU (BFA) and California State University, Long Beach (MFA) graduate, who is currently an instructor at Brigham Young University, is a painter whose works “address the nature […]
No self-respecting dramatist would set a Biblical Apocalypse in the parking lot of a shopping center; it’s too mundane, too much a whimper and not a bang, to produce the proper sense of doom. Yet today it’s a routine event to carry the groceries out to the car, […]
Raised by a single mother in Clearfield, Taylor Knuth, new assistant director of the Salt Lake City Arts Council, says, “Art saved my life, being a young gay kid in Utah.” When asked flat out what he wants people to know about him, he adds, “We should be […]
The way Andrew Rice describes his current situation may encapsulate how a lot of us feel: “I’ve been trudging along, trying to see what happens next…” For the past year, Rice was involved in The Open Room, which, as Ann Poore described it for 15 Bytes, began in […]
If you’ve been to the Eccles Theatre in Salt Lake City, you’ve experienced Laura Sharp Wilson’s work: she created the terrazzo floor design beneath your feet. Wilson is an East Coast girl. After earning a BFA at Carnegie Mellon, she spent time as an intern at the Fabric […]
First introduced in 1892, The Nutcracker has been a Christmastime staple in the US since the mid-twentieth century. Municipal Ballet’s condensed and sophisticated take on the ballet, River of Rosewater, was released on December 23 via Youtube. If you stan a traditional Nutcracker, be warned: this version will […]
Artist and poet Rebecca Everett, a Utah native who studied painting at Brigham Young Unviersity with Robert Marshall and Trevor Southey, has lived many places, pursuing artistic activities in each one: in Bavaria, she studied weaving, stained glass and pottery; in England, she began work in photography and […]
2020 was undoubtedly tough, but Vincent Mattina remarks that it might have been his most productive year yet. He co-curated his first show, Anthropocene, at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center (UCCC), where, along with works by Grant Fuhst and Chauncey Secrist, his works explored environmental themes, while concurrently […]
READ LOCAL First boasts Utah’s most comprehensive collection of poets and authors. For this inaugural month of 2021, we present five poems by Cindy King. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, River Styx, Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, North American Review, and elsewhere. Recently, King’s poetry was featured on […]
(This article was written while Annie Blake was in hospice. On Dec. 16 her husband announced on Instagram that she had passed.) “How could it be possible to take in all the sad stories and become big enough to hold them all? Or to compress them […]
We’ve all got our Holiday media traditions, the books we reread, the movies we watch again. For some, it will be classics like A Christmas Carol or Home Alone; others may span out to less traditional fare, like say In Bruges (give it a try: if you can […]
With our “Still Here” series, we are checking in with members of Utah’s art community to see what the past several months have meant for them. Emily Larsen is a Utah-based curator and collage artist. She currently works as the Head of Exhibitions and Programs at the Springville […]
Despite appearances to the contrary, group exhibitions of art are the norm, and should be. A theme, familiar or exotic, or a location, a medium, even a gender can provide the opportunity to compare how different artists handle the same materials: physical, emotional, contextual. From landscapes featuring Mt. […]
I have been lusting after this Tarot deck for a couple of years now, ever since I saw it on an Australian website I follow, Two Sides Tarot. I couldn’t afford it but loved that it contained lots of little landscapes that looked like Utah (and no court […]
47 years of vessel-making took a rather large toll on my body, and resulted in the need for a number of hand surgeries, one earlier this year (a successful thumb repair). Sadly, I still have another surgery pending to fix a painful neurological problem, and with luck I will be a two-handed maker again.
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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