{"id":14611,"date":"2012-12-06T01:45:08","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T07:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=14611"},"modified":"2025-10-23T19:25:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:25:54","slug":"rio-mesa-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/rio-mesa-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Art, Science and the Land: Rio Mesa Center encourages artists, including Christine Baczek"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Science and the humanities are often viewed as completely separate disciplines. Our culture sees them as being at opposite ends of a spectrum, but the world\u2019s greatest minds understand the two fields are actually intertwined and inseparable. Leonardo Da Vinci said, \u201cStudy the science of art and the art of science.\u201d This piece of wisdom may be on the verge of a renaissance. The evidence of a rebirth can be found in several different places, like our own science and technology arts museum, The Leonardo, and in emerging academic ventures like the University of Utah\u2019s Rio Mesa Center.<\/p>\n

The center, started in 2006, is located near Moab, along the Dolores River.|0-1|<\/strong>\u00a0The Rio Mesa Center has been designed to serve as \u201ca modern, multi-disciplinary, outdoor laboratory where science, architecture, engineering and art come together to question our notion of what it means to live on the Colorado Plateau.\u201d Manager of the center and Associate Instructor in the Department of Geography at the University of Utah, Zach Lundeen elaborates on the center\u2019s unique goals, \u201cTo maximize the audience within the University, they chose to try and make it a broader, multi-disciplinary research center.\u201d An example of their efforts is a course held at the center that combined landscape ecology and painting. Kim Martinez, an Associate Professor in the Art and Art History Department collaborated with Sylvia Torti, a biology professor who now heads the Honors Program at the University of Utah, to create an educational experience that explored science and art. For half the day, students received instruction on landscape painting, and the other half of the day consisted of lessons on landscape ecology. \u201cThey would try and look at how artists and scientists maybe go about things differently,\u201d says Lundeen, \u201cbut also how they approach things with similar kinds of questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courses and student projects at the Rio Mesa Center range from entomology to creative writing, but the opportunity to use the center is not limited to the University of Utah community. Writers and artists can apply to use the space for a residency. \u201cWe\u2019re facilitating inspiration and solitude,\u201d says Lundeen. \u201cThis area is totally removed. If you go out there it\u2019s amazing. You look at the night sky and there is no light pollution and no traffic. To just go hang out there, you\u2019ve got an amazing, diverse landscape. It presents a nice environment where a lot of different activities that can be done. It\u2019s set aside for academic pursuits, whatever they may be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christine Baczek, Collections Photographer, Archivist, and Digital Media Producer for the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA), was inspired to take advantage of the pristine landscape at the Rio Mesa Center, where she is currently an artist-in-residence. \u201cI have applied for a lot of residencies, so I\u2019ve read a lot about many of them,\u201d the artist says. \u201cWhat strikes me as unique about this residency is the location. There is nothing like this in Southern Utah. And it\u2019s also unique because it has this interdisciplinary approach. I feel like I haven\u2019t seen that a lot at all in residencies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the next year or two Baczek will make periodic trips to the center where she will collect plant samples that she will press and use to make photograms. \u201cPhotograms are when you take something and put it directly on your light sensitive paper — in this case glass — and expose it to light and then you get the outline of the object. And if it\u2019s translucent in any places you\u2019ll have different effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

She makes the photograms with a cyanotype, a blue chemical, and then houses the pieces in a custom wooden frame that has a motion sensor-activated light behind it. When a person walks past the frame, the image lights up. \u201cThe idea is that, just like when you\u2019re out walking or on a hike and you don\u2019t really notice things until you notice them, that there\u2019s this thing going on around you that you have to interact with in order to recognize it and in order for it to appear to you,\u201d Baczek says.<\/p>\n

The project got underway this October, and Baczek is building toward creating a larger piece. \u201cThe culmination of this will be a grouping of light boxes. I\u2019m hoping to partner with a biologist at some point, who I\u2019ll find through the Rio Mesa Center, who can give me some information about the plants and if they\u2019re native to that part of the state, or, if they\u2019ve been brought in, what the plant\u2019s history is. And that will determine where it goes in the installation and if I use a colored or stained glass,\u201d she says. Baczek\u2019s goals for her residency extend beyond wanting to complete a project and into a desire to give something back to the Rio Mesa Center. \u201cThis place has so much potential that I want to help it meet its potential. So I also feel really motivated to do something great down there,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

As she works at the center and strives to create something wonderful, Baczek encounters some of the other people who are utilizing the space and finds inspiration to experiment with her work. \u201cWhen I was down there about a month ago, there were some people doing bird research. They had nets up by the river. They were catching birds and banding them just to study what birds were down there. So I photographed them with their birds and whenever feathers would fall off from when they were catching the birds, I collected those and we were doing some photograms with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

This kind of collaboration is what Lundeen is hoping to foster through the center. \u201cYou\u2019re in this very inviting environment where any of those perceived walls or divisions between sciences and humanities are down because it\u2019s a much more casual atmosphere, it takes you out of the more traditional university setting,\u201d he says. \u201cHopefully that promotes more interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The barriers between art and science are crumbling at the Rio Mesa Center. As the center grows, perhaps people will begin to realize the two disciplines are not at odds with each other. The reality is that art and science are more powerful when they\u2019re combined.<\/p>\n

For more information about becoming an artist-in-residence at the Rio Mesa Center, visit their\u00a0website. You can also read about their current art and interpretation projects\u00a0here. Christine Baczek is part of a group show at\u00a0Nox Contemporary\u00a0through the month of December that features a collection of her photograms. You can view more of her work at\u00a0www.baczekphotography.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University of Utah’s Rio Mesa Center near Moab Utah fosters artistic exploration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1533,"featured_media":14679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,14],"tags":[218,1140],"class_list":["post-14611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-organization_spotlight","category-visual_arts","tag-christine-baczek","tag-rio-mesa-center"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/riomesa.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 02:10:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1533"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14611"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97276,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14611\/revisions\/97276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}