{"id":100883,"date":"2026-01-07T08:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T15:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=100883"},"modified":"2026-01-08T09:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T16:11:16","slug":"white-knuckle-moments-at-the-salt-lake-city-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/white-knuckle-moments-at-the-salt-lake-city-library\/","title":{"rendered":"White Knuckle Moments at the Salt Lake City Library"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Wide<\/a>

Installation view of White Knuckle, installed in the Lower Urban Room beneath the library mall.<\/p><\/div>\n

Salt Lake\u2019s public libraries have in common more rooms than strictly needed, but which are not wasted. Each branch has at least one art gallery, and the main library, which has its own TRAX stop and a row of shops that curl around its plaza like a sleeping cat\u2019s tail, rivals UMOCA in the number of its art exhibition spaces. There\u2019s Art at the Main, one of those shops, located between the library’s two sets of entrance doors. The dedicated gallery on the fourth floor may have the most remarkable setting of any local exhibition space. Another venue on the ground floor shows advanced students\u2019 efforts, while the Children\u2019s Library in the basement boasts a room full of exemplary art and a simulated attic seemingly borrowed from the top of a more conventional building. Then there\u2019s the Lower Urban Room, a long hallway giving access to the rooms beneath the mall, which provides a place for shows like White Knuckle: Artwork by Wasteland<\/em>. A white knuckle is one of those contronyms English relishes; literally a sign of a tight grip on the one hand, and on the other a symptom of someone barely holding on.<\/h4>\n

According to the poster, Wasteland<\/em> includes Allison Joy McKinney, Lucia Borup-Douglas, Celia Thomas, and Hunter Bailey, although the 21 objects in White Knuckle<\/em> also include three sketches by London Matthews in black oil on white canvas. These may require a moment\u2019s effort to separate the signal from the noise\u2014though once that happens they become unmistakable.<\/h4>\n

One thing all five artists seem to agree on is that art should be unexpected. It could be argued that too much Utah art falls into predictable patterns of subject matter and technique, an experience that can resemble listening to an evening of testimonies. That hasn\u2019t happened here. In \u201cThink like a Hermit\u201d and \u201cThe Path to Enlightenment,\u201d Celia Thomas ennobles the studio sofa as a not only welcome, but necessary station along one of life\u2019s more vital learning curves. Hunter Bailey makes similarly ironic use of grandiose titles, like \u201cInterstitial Wastes That the Righteous See From Carriage and Car,\u201d applying them to slightly modified images of cars and boats that often appear as semi-failed signs of material success. In what might be the show\u2019s apotheosis, Bailey\u2019s \u201cTalking With Each Other About Each Other\u201d features a table lamp in an otherwise dark room, seemingly in a t\u00eate-a-t\u00eate with what turns out to be its own reflection in a mirror.<\/h4>\n
\"Painting<\/a>

Celia Thomas, “Think Like a Hermit”<\/p><\/div>\n