{"id":104508,"date":"2026-07-22T18:15:45","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T01:15:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=104508"},"modified":"2026-07-22T18:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T01:23:17","slug":"the-face-of-utah-sculpture-still-has-more-to-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-face-of-utah-sculpture-still-has-more-to-say\/","title":{"rendered":"The Face of Utah Sculpture Still Has More to Say"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Heather Rison, \u201cDial Tone\u201d (left) and \u201cHanged Man”<\/p><\/div>\n

It seems like every year rumors circulate that the Face of Utah Sculpture<\/em> may have run its course and might be cancelled. Glass artist Dan Cummings, who founded the event 22 years ago and shepherded it through the COVID-19 shutdown six years ago, admits that he and folklorist Michael Christensen, who manages and mounts the open exhibition for the Utah Cultural Celebration Center, did ask each other this year if the event still has what it takes to be relevant. Their decision to go ahead was vindicated in several ways. The turnout at the opening looked to be the largest in recent memory, and anyone who understands that art is as much a consumer phenomenon as a demonstration of creative energy among artists will appreciate that. Then a new award coinciding with the nation\u2019s semiquincentennial\u2014the 250th anniversary of the public release of the Declaration of Independence\u2014eventually sent a couple of artists home with a dollar each for every one of those years. Finally, and arguably most important, the range and variety of the artworks on display continued to celebrate much of the best work of the last two years, even while pointing to new directions that promise sculpture will continue to be a lively player in the ever self-renewing Utah arts scene.<\/p>\n

There are 32 artists participating in the 22nd Face of Utah Sculpture<\/em>. Establishing the resonant combination of traditional craft quality and innovative expression that this show foregrounds begins immediately inside the door to the Pilar Pobil Celebration Gallery with Heather Rison\u2019s two half-figures, \u201cDial Tone\u201d and \u201cHanged Man.\u201d These two Barbie doll-sized figures actually look as though they could have begun as a single male form that the artist chose to cut in half at the waist, thereby raising the possibility that their narrative subjects are somehow connected. The top half, \u201cDial Tone,\u201d features a tightly-posed man, arms at his sides, with eyes closed and his head tilted back, the title possibly redirecting the impression from one of transcendent bliss to a sense of a patient waiting for whatever might happen next. Nearby, \u201cHanged Man\u201d definitively adds a third dimension to the tarot card image of the inverted individual hung up by a rope, invisible in this case, tied around one ankle, leaving the other leg bent across it to produce an image like a most tactile numeral 4.<\/p>\n

Compared to Risen\u2019s expressively gnarly anatomy, Laura Lee Stay\u2019s \u201cDream Catcher,\u201d a full-length nude with a spiral of birds taking flight around her, stresses gracefulness. Dan Cummings’ extravagant\u2014and extravagantly titled\u2014\u201cLoving the Art of Suncarved Glass,\u201d which creates the illusion of a fully round figure inside the hallucinatory looking-glass world within a mirror, invokes the magic space through which Lewis Carroll reintroduced Alice after her adventures in Wonderland.<\/p>\n