Voices from the River
This month we bring you selections by five local authors. Voices from the River includes pieces by Karen M. Bayard, Sean Patrick McPeak, Suzy Eskenazi, Emilia Wint, and Gail Weinflash.
RDT and RW Present a Joint Fall Show, Online
Salt Lake City’s two reigning modern dance companies, Ririe-Woodbury and Repertory Dance Theatre, have joined forces to present DOUBLE TAKE. A season opener for both parties, the historic collaboration is an hour-long, virtual, on-demand performance featuring two world premieres. The film begins with a recorded Zoom meeting in […]
Ron Nolte: Looking for the Artist’s Hand
When historians scramble to find physical evidence for understanding a culture or period, they may consider utilitarian fine art as a harbinger of a new century, a reflection of a nation’s existential crisis, evidence of a major war, or proof of an economic recession; but, generally, crafts and […]
Still Here: James R. Swensen
With our “Still Here” series, we are checking in with members of Utah’s art community to see what the past six months has meant for them. James R. Swensen is an associate professor of art history and the history of photography at Brigham Young University. His research interests […]
Still Here: Stephen Trimble
With our “Still Here” series, we are checking in with members of Utah’s art community to see what the past six months has meant for them. Writer and photographer Stephen Trimble lives in Torrey and in Salt Lake City. His latest book, The Capitol Reef Reader, is his 25th. […]
‘If the next is better, I’ll still miss this world’: A Review of Michael Lavers’ After Earth
Anyone who’s seen the play or film Amadeus will remember the scene where Mozart has debuted his new opera for Emperor Joseph and his palace gang. The emperor tells Mozart (I’m paraphrasing) that it was a good effort, and showed promise and talent, but that it had — […]
Still Here: Beth Krensky
With our “Still Here” series, we are checking in with members of Utah’s art community to see what the past six months has meant for them. Beth Krensky is based in Salt Lake City where she makes art, is a professor of art teaching at the University of […]
DeCaria, Sisemore and Taylor Make for a Stellar Fall Show
Walking into Phillips Gallery at 4 p.m., an hour before closing time and a day before Stroll and the official opening, I see Meri Ploetz DeCaria, a third of the current show in the Main Gallery, chatting on the phone — animatedly for the usually reserved gallery director […]
Joshua Rivkin’s “Suitor” is a Candid Exploration of Manhood
I am a different kind of lover of truth now Since his death in 2011, Edwin Parker ‘Cy’ Twombly, Jr. has emerged as a key figure of 20th-century art, even as many of his contemporaries and followers have fallen behind. Ironic confirmation of his importance comes from […]
Michael Lavers, Shanan Ballam, Katharine Coles: Finalists for the 15 Bytes Book Award in Poetry
Michael Lavers, After Earth, University of Tampa Press If much of contemporary poetry is like a museum full of Rothko paintings, then Michael Lavers is walking in and hanging up a Renaissance painting. If it’s like an aviary, then Lavers’ book After Earth is more like a woodpecker across the […]
The Utah Symphony Opens their Season with an Intercontinental Soiree for Strings
A year ago, I would have never anticipated a season opener like this for the Utah Symphony. Instead of bustling through downtown Salt Lake City amid dinner parties, transit traffic and other event crowds, I strolled with a friend across a rather desolate South Temple toward a sparsely […]
Traci O’Very Covey and Others Add a Touch of the Local to the New Salt Lake City Airport
It’s an art show you can’t get in to see without a ticket – to Providence, or Paris, or even just to Portland (Oh, wait, not going there right now). Yes, Salt Lake City’s new International Airport is operational, with a decent budget for art, though most work by Utah […]
John Sproul’s Inner Child Searches for “Serenity Now!”
We all can relate to the idea of the inner child, the concept introduced by Freud that everyone possesses a “childlike aspect” within the unconscious mind. This inner child manifests as a subpersonality, an aspect of one’s character that is shown during times of challenge. It is a […]
Queer Spectra Arts Festival Explores the Risk of Representation
Queer Spectra Arts Festival 2020 is a two day interactive virtual gallery (September 5-6, 2020) showcasing work by LGBTQIA+ individuals from the Salt Lake area as well as artists from across the nation. The gallery can be accessed for another week here. The festival’s theme this year is Risk […]
River Writing: A Space Beyond Perfection and Comparison
The twenty-first century’s first pandemic is in full swing when I video conference with Nan Seymour. We were scheduled to meet in person but, after possible exposure to Covid-19, I am under self-quarantine while awaiting test results. In 2015, Seymour founded River Writing — a Salt Lake City-based collective […]
How Do You Review Mountains? Jena Schmidt’s Oil Paintings; Samuel Parker’s 1835 Journal
“There is much in the scenery to admire; mountain rising above mountain, precipice rising above precipice.” — Samuel Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour: Beyond the Rocky Mountains in 1835 How do you review mountains, or paintings of mountains? Mountains too formidably, completely, contain all opposites: in paintings, every […]
Several Poems by Bob Rees
Bob Rees is Director of Mormon Studies and Visiting Professor at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies in the Baltics. His writing has appeared in local, national, and international publications.
An Archway of Participation and a Call to Action
Since May, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, citizens across the country have defaced, destroyed, and advocated for the removal of racist, colonial-centered monuments. At the Minnesota State Capitol, a statue of Christopher Columbus was ripped from its pedestal and thrown face down on the […]
Granary Arts Exhibit Captures the Faces of Vanishing Voices
Linguist Noam Chomsky says language often has been considered “the core defining feature of modern humans, the source of human creativity, cultural enrichment, and complex social structure.” Yet one language dies every 14 days. Nearly half of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken on Earth today will disappear by […]
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