Visual artists are not like musicians. A musician will practice making sounds every day. She may tell you that if she misses even one day, she can hear the difference; that after two days, her colleagues can hear it; and after three days, the audience will know it. […]
Tears are made of salt water. Grief is love. Whatever I have come to know as love and grief, I have learned from Great Salt Lake. -Terry Tempest Williams The fate of Great Salt Lake is hardly more than a footnote in the longer story of how immigrant […]
Out There includes 17 artists, most of whom will be familiar to Modern West’s regulars. They all appear frequently, and most have some work in the collection, giving their audience a chance to witness their gradual, and occasionally sudden evolution. Two themes that made for new work were the ongoing environmental crisis, which has only grown worse while almost nothing is done by those who could and ought to help, and the pandemic, with its associated social isolation and continuing controversy, in spite of mortality remaining high.
What is identity to an artist? In cosmopolitan Europe, it was often where you came from: Leonardo from Vinci — a village outside Florence. El Greco: “the Greek,” Spain’s most popular painter. Johannes Vermeer of Delft, a successful trading city, eager to show off its luxury goods. In […]
One word can make the case. For example, as a direction, west is an abstraction — that is, a thought or idea with noconcrete, physical presence. As a place, on the other hand, “the West” is one of the more common and evocative locations in space: one which […]
If the word “pandemic” is spoken, it may bring many things to mind, like fear, anxiety, isolation, frustration, even shame: stories of mortality, the loss of several years of life, and the setbacks that may make that loss permanent. All these elements are on display right now at […]
Al Denyer came here from England, a place celebrated for its paradigmatic topography: hills and dales, lakes and rivers, cliffs and footpaths. Since she departed that small country — physically for the expanses of Utah and cognitively for even larger landscapes, like the Amazon rain forest — her […]
Like for many, the events of 2020 have caused considerable disruption, heartache, and stress in my life. As I look back on this tumultuous time, I could easily dwell on the canceled: travel plans, artist residency, exhibitions, conferences, kids summer camp, and school, as well as the loss of friends and family members. Instead, I would like to focus on the positives.
[dropcap]Almost[/dropcap] from the beginning, Diane Stewart’s Modern West Fine Art has been evolving away from the cowboys, American Indians and Western landscapes — however jazzed up or modernized — that threatened to define it at its inception. Gradual at first, the process has picked up steam in recent […]
As with all juried shows, this year’s annual Utah Ties exhibition is an inconsistent mixed bag —some works evoke the grotesque and the abject, while others are quietly beautiful and even majestic. As a collective, the show includes a select number of truly remarkable pieces here and there […]
Al Denyer’s studio is looking quite empty, as she has just taken some large drawings off the wall to go out to different exhibitions. The nationally known artist and U assistant professor, originally from Bath, England, tells us: “I am currently working on ‘The Green River Series’ of […]
To non-specialists, the timeline of art history is marked by long periods when nothing happens, punctuated by sudden expansion. About half a million years ago, our part-ape, part-human ancestors noticed that certain things—rocks, branches, bits of bone—resembled other things, like faces or the bodies of animals, and took […]
Friday night Utah Arts & Museums opened their 2013 Statewide Annual at the Rio Gallery, featuring mixed media and works on paper. Juried by Simon Zalkind, an independent curator from Denver, Colorado, and Lisa Tamiris Becker, Director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the exhibit features […]
Salt Lake City gets to host the Rocky Mountain Printmaking Alliance (RMPA) Symposium this weekend, so don’t be surprised if you run into the work of more than a few printmakers in the next few days and weeks. The RMPA was initiated by Jill Fitterer, Associate Professor at […]
Geoff Wichert takes a look at two unique though complimentary artists showing this month at Salt Lake’s Kayo Gallery.
In this video interview University of Utah professor Al Denyer discusses her new body of work inspired by the Arctic.
Recognition makes some artists want to go big. Al Denyer has gone microscopic. For her current installation at The Leonardo she has put one of her works on the surface of a microchip.
