photos by Will Thompson

The Salt Lake Art Center is going rogue. Starting this month, they are moving their exhibition receptions to the first Friday of the month. They will still be open late on third Fridays during Salt Lake’s Gallery Stroll, but from now on they will be opening a new show on the first Friday of each month. The center’s director, Adam Price, is hopeful that the openings, which along with the art will feature a DJ, cash bar and food, will become “a monthly celebration of the vitality of Utah’s art community. I’m also hoping that this will be a chance for our hardworking gallerists to enjoy themselves away from the hubbub of Gallery Stroll.”

The Art Center’s move to the first Friday is part of their ongoing effort to throw open their doors and use their prime real estate as a community center. Over the past eighteen months attendance at the Art Center has increased six fold. This is due to a number of factors, one of which is that they have hosted events for various outside organizations, and have filled their own social calendar with parties and fundraisers for patrons, staff and members. They have also been expanding their gallery space, most recently with the addition of the Locals Only Gallery, which opened last month (see our review).

New Genres Gallery
This month, for the inaugural First Friday Celebration on October 7th, the Art Center will be kicking off several exciting new exhibitions and opportunities. The New Genres Gallery, in what used to house the center’s accounting staff, will launch with an exhibit by Los Angeles artist Brian Bress. “Creative Ideas for Every Season” is a single channel video, which “explores the difficulties and absurdities confronting the pursuit of a creative process.” In the video a female protagonist travels across a moon-like landscape in a cardboard jalopy engaging in deadpan conversation with a series of imagined fantastical characters. The New Genres Gallery will provide a committed space for the center to feature contemporary artists from around the world who incorporate video, performance, installation, digital media and mixed media in their work. With this and the Locals Only Gallery, the center has nearly doubled the exhibition space available for visitors to explore.

Lecture Series
Also opening this month (in the Main Gallery), Doublespeak features the work of contemporary female artists who use strategies of code and layered meaning to explore issues of politics, war and gender from a feminine perspective. Included among the many artists in the exhibit are Guggenheim Fellow Jennifer Nelson, 2011 Venice Biennial artist Daniela Comani, and 2011 Rome Prize recipient Mary Reid Kelly. Coinciding with the opening of Doublespeak is the first talk in Salt Lake Art Center’s 2011 Fall Lecture Series. Iranian-American poet Sholeh Wolpé will speak and give a reading from Rooftops of Tehran at 7pm on October 7th.

Provo and Ogden, who hold their own gallery walks on the first Friday, may not be overjoyed at the Art Center’s move; and West Temple is not the only place in Salt Lake for art openings at the beginning of the month – the Utah Arts Alliance, a block away on Main Street, holds their exhibition receptions on the first Friday; but if Adam Price has his way, food, drink, music and art will put the first Friday and Salt Lake Art Center on many people’s calendar.

Urban Gallery & Swinj Art Productions
The Art center likes parties so much that they even hold them away from home. In September, they joined Neighborhood House |0| for this year’s installation of the Urban Gallery, a 337 Project event that has continued now that that organization has become part of the Art Center.|1|

In past years, Urban Gallery has been a competition between several artists or teams of artists to see who could create the best work of art on a garage door. This year, the entire suite was given to Swinj Art Productions to design after their proposal for an integrated work was accepted by the Salt Lake Art Center. On September 23rd and 24th Trent Call, Benjamin Wiemeyer,|3| Evan Jed Memmott, Gailon Justus, Mike Murdock, Richard Landvatter, Skyler Chuback, and Sri Whipple attacked the eight doors at the west side day-care and support facility. “It was really fun to watch [the team] work collaboratively,” says Neighborhood House board member Catherine Kanter. “You could see how they were being influenced by each other. The end product turned out to be a unified piece that flows from door to door with high energy, bold colors and vivid imagery.”

You may know Swinj as the name of the collaborative art zine Trent Call produced between 1999 and 2009 (see our article). The collaboration has expanded to include street art projects. The organization, with a fluid roster of artists, is responsible for several murals around town, including The Salt Lake Running Company at 7th East and I-80 (Chuck Landvatter, David Habben, Dan Christopherson, Trent Call, Ben Weimeyre, Gaillon Justus) |9-11| and the Broadway mural between State and Main. On getting the commissions, Call says “Most often there is one artist who is contacted by the owner of the wall, and recruits the others to help out.” In the actual production of the murals, Call says that they sometimes work from a loose sketch as a jumping off point, but things change and there is some free styling and plenty of discussion about ideas and direction. Call remarks “With the handful of walls getting a paint job in the recent years, hopefully it will inspire more owners of walls to add some color to their life.”

You can learn more about Swinj at swinj.com. If you know of a great looking wall, send us a photo and we’ll post it on our Daily Bytes blog.

The Salt Lake Art Center’s First Friday celebrations run from 8 to 10 pm and include live music, food, a reasonably priced cash bar, and 5 galleries of contemporary art. Each month brings a new show to the center and a new reason to celebrate the vibrant art scene in Salt Lake. The next call for exhibition proposals for the Locals Only Gallery ends October 14th.

Jared Christensen

Jared Christensen holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in photography from Westminster College (’12). He has since worked at Tanner Frames, and has been exploring the effects of presentation and framing in his and others’ work. He will soon be pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Curatorial Practice at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.