There’s a nifty bit of architectural symbolism going down at the Bountiful-Davis Art Center this month. Around the periphery of the building’s main space, three separate artists have set up works that address the ever-present dilemma of how a society feeds its members. What’s in the middle, instead […]
No one work of art can “say it all,” but the poster image for Landscape and Identity tells the story that led Jason Lanegan to once again gather a group of artists whose works address some concern they share with him. Unlike curators who start from a notion […]
When we care about our message, no matter what it is, we will also care about its delivery. —from the exhibition statement by Jason Lanegan There are times when a viewer can stand before a work of art and see that it’s real, yet be unable to understand […]
In 1986, I toured a pair of museums on Trafalgar Square in London: the National Gallery, possibly the finest collection in an international field marked by many superb contenders, and the National Portrait Gallery, where I encountered a modern portrait that came to haunt me over the years. […]
From time to time, I’ve been asked if I’ve read Walter Benjamin’s celebrated essay, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Written in 1935, it remains one of the mileposts of critical art history. Benjamin argues that over the centuries when it was necessary to […]
Susan Klinker’s assemblage, variously titled “Scarab Piece” or “Desert Transformation,” recounts what she describes as her “transformative experience during a desert meditation” while she was “on a three-day prayer retreat at Christ in the Desert Monastery, Abiquiu, New Mexico.” The work initially seems to resemble a rugged, weathered […]
Jason Lanegan’s “Ancestral Reliquary II: Sylvina Belle Frohlich” could be described as a geometric assemblage that, hanging on a wall, establishes a context that literally connects it to architecture. The reference is underscored by hints in its shape: complex, house-like, but initially disorienting, not least because of the […]
“Peonies VII,” etching by Jenni Christensen, photo by John Snyder “I have always loved flowers and the garden. The variation is endless.” – Jenni Christensen Although in the high desert of the Great Basin, you could mistake a small patch of Pleasant Grove, Utah, for a flower-filled backyard […]
[dropcap]In[/dropcap] biology, circumstances—what scientists call “niches”—summon particular organisms into being. So it may have been inevitable that BYU and Snow College, two of the principal breeding grounds of Utah art, would each possess a teacher who is also a prolific artist, a keen student of local culture, a […]
The past is becoming an increasingly hot topic in the present as scientific and technological advancements have made DNA analysis relatively simple and cheap, and the amassing of historical documents, journals and photos, easily accessible online. These developments have spurred interest in the individual aspect of the past, […]
The art world is full of strange processes, from the rituals artists use to give themselves ideas, to the crafts they employ in bringing these inspirations into being, and so on to the necessary habits and innovations employed by audiences in sorting out the results. One of the […]
Frank McEntire is one of Utah’s most prominent artists. Though he is also well known for his ancillary activities — directing the Utah Arts Council, curating a number of museum exhibitions and writing art criticism for the Salt Lake Tribune for a number of years — McEntire has […]
Born and raised in Washington State, Jason Lanegan was involved in drawing and other creative outlets from his earliest memories. With eyes set upon being a high school art teacher, Jason first attended BYU-Idaho where he obtained an associate degree in the visual arts. He went on to […]
