{"id":20110,"date":"2013-04-04T16:14:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T22:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=20110"},"modified":"2021-02-04T19:02:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T01:02:00","slug":"bridgette-meinhold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/bridgette-meinhold\/","title":{"rendered":"Bridgette Meinhold: Weathering the Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bridgette_meinhold\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Local artist and writer Bridgette Meinhold can capture the nuts and bolts of a place, as well as its mood. Both skills lend themselves to her latest endeavors. She recently published her first book,\u00a0Urgent Architecture \u2013 40 Sustainable Housing Solutions for a Changing World<\/em>, where she writes about sustainable housing in the context of natural disasters. One section is dedicated to innovative housing built to withstand catastrophes brought on by Mother Nature. Meinhold, who enjoys depicting anything but a blue sky in her artwork, is also currently part of a two-person show at Gallery MAR,\u00a0Atmospheric Intentions,<\/em>\u00a0which opened on March 29.<\/p>\n

From a very young age, Meinhold was drawn to the arts. But as someone who is equally right-brained and left-brained she pursued other interests in college. Originally from Oklahoma City, she earned an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from San Diego State University. She was lured to Park City by Utah\u2019s world-famous powder, and found another reason to make it her home when she fell in love. But before settling down in her small A-Frame cabin in the hills above Park City, she went to Stanford and earned her masters degree in civil and environmental engineering with a focus on sustainability.<\/p>\n

When she returned to the Beehive State, Meinhold worked as a sustainability consultant and later became a freelance writer for Inhabitat.com, where she writes about green design and architecture. \u201cAlong the way I also came to the realization that what I really, truly wanted to do was be an artist. My husband was really supportive of that and he built me an art studio out of a 40-foot shipping container,\u201d Meinhold says. In the August 2011 edition of 15 Bytes, Kelly Green snapped a photo essay of the unique space. Meinhold shares the studio with her husband. He uses half of it as a workshop, where one of his projects is creating custom frames from reclaimed barn wood for her artwork. In her half of the space, Meinhold creates encaustic landscapes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found encaustic through a workshop here in Park City at Spiro Arts. Discovering encaustic felt like coming home. It was a medium that resonated with me and I felt like it had a lot of potential. I could have stuck with oil or acrylic and honed my technique and found my style but there\u2019s something about the Encaustic that was really interesting, and I felt like I could experiment with it a lot and kind of create something that maybe had never been done before,\u201d Meinhold says.<\/p>\n

Meinhold\u2019s images of sprawling wilderness, rugged mountain peaks, and rolling fog, capture a sense of place, specifically the area surrounding her home and Park City. \u201cI think what people like about my work is that it kind of feels like Park City, it feels like the area and so I think especially if they don\u2019t live here they can take a bit of Park City home with them. What I\u2019m doing is preserving memories. Each of these paintings comes from my own images and my own experiences. I\u2019m trying to recreate that feeling of what it was at that moment and just like everybody\u2019s memories, they\u2019re hazy, and you make not remember all the details, but maybe you remember specific details, so that\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to do with my work,\u201d Meinhold says.<\/p>\n

In her latest show at Gallery MAR,\u00a0Atmospheric Intentions,<\/em>\u00a0Meinhold will be showing work alongside her mentor Shawna Moore. The title helped both artists to set an intention for their work, and Meinhold explores the theme from several different angles with an emphasis on capturing the mood. \u201cFirst we look at it from what\u2019s physical: what the air is doing, what the clouds are doing and then afterwards it\u2019s about creating what the mood is,\u201d Meinhold says. \u201c(My work) tends to be on that moody, sort of melancholy side, because the atmospheres that tend to create the most interest for me are not the blue days. Everybody can take a picture of a blue day, but fog to me is very interesting. I love watching it, and where we live, we\u2019re often actually in the fog, just in the clouds, and we get to see that a lot. I find that really fascinating, seeing it change and move across the mountains like a curtain closing on a stage.\u201d She notes that depending on the day and the light, the atmosphere can change the mood of a place and the way it is perceived by people.<\/p>\n