{"id":22672,"date":"2013-09-05T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T18:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=22672"},"modified":"2025-11-09T22:23:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T05:23:26","slug":"22672","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/22672\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting Shapes at the Ladies Literary Club"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Tell people you\u2019re going to be an artist and you\u2019ll get a variety of reactions: enthusiasm, disappointment, skepticism, envy, apathy. One of the more surprising responses, though, will be that successful and concerned relative (generally dressed in well-pressed attire) who will suggest that if you are serious about pursuing a career as an artist you would be well advised to draw up a business plan. \u201cA business plan for art?\u201d you\u2019ll ask. But how can you make a plan for the best, most inspirational part of art: chance.<\/p>\n

Artists spend years honing a craft and developing a style. The most interesting ones, though, are always changing, embracing \u2014 even searching out \u2014 the chance encounter that will ignite a shift in their work.<\/p>\n

Ashley Anderson and Mary Sinner met by chance. They struck up a conversation when both were at Finch Lane Gallery as part of Artists of Utah\u2019s 35\u00d735 exhibition waiting for a photographer from the Salt Lake Tribune to show up. That initial encounter led Anderson, a choreographer, to ask Sinner, who works in collage and installation, to collaborate with her when the Utah Heritage Foundation invited her to create a work to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Ladies Literary Club building in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n

Choreographers frequently employ set designers to create a visual experience that will enhance their vision for a dance, but Anderson wanted Sinner to be more than that. She invited her to create something for the space and then she would place a dance in it. In fact, it was Sinner\u2019s own art and her initial ideas for how to use the space at the Ladies Literary Club \u2014 where, it turns out, Sinner had had her wedding reception \u2014 that inspired Anderson\u2019s choice of dance. \u201cI began thinking about how Mary\u2019s work is layered.\u201d says Anderson, \u201cIt was an inspiration to figure out how you similarly layer dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this is where that suggestion for a business plan runs into another problem: how do you put into your plan the necessary costs for research and development? Because what that proverbial question \u2014 \u201cHow long did that take you?\u201d \u2014 misses about any one artistic piece is the number of hours spent in trial and error searching for a form and method (what a CEO would call R&D). A smart business might stick to what they\u2019ve done before, maybe adding a few tweaks, possiblly some value-added design. A good artist, though, is always trying to reinvent herself.<\/p>\n

A good artist also sees challenges as opportunities. To celebrate the Ladies Literary Club\u2019s, Anderson and Sinner decided to engage the 100 year-old space \u2014 a decision that poses a number of problems. The stage is quite small, restricting the types of dances that can be set on it. And the walls provide no space to hang works on. What are a choreographer and an artist to do?<\/p>\n

With the space itself as their common them, Anderson and Sinner worked separately, developing their own ideas, then adjusting them when they came together to make the final piece.<\/p>\n

The \u201cproblem\u201d of the space presented Anderson with the answer to her question of how to collage dance. Looking through her archive of works, she found two pieces that could work well together. Both works are sparse \u2014 a limited number of dancers move in unison, performing task-like movements \u2014 and neither is set to a soundtrack. One piece, choreographed for dancers rolling on the floor (because at the time she created the work Anderson had a broken leg), Anderson decided to place beneath the stage. The other would play out on the stage. Together they would become different layers of a single piece.<\/p>\n

The space also spurred Sinner on to a unique solution. She wasn\u2019t allowed to hang work on walls, and even if she were, the dark lighting of the performance space would mean no once could see them. Inspired by French artist Christian Boltanski, Sinner decided to project her collages rather than hang them. Working, as she often does, out of a variety of materials, she collaged cutout images onto Plexiglas, and projected them on to the walls. \u201cIt\u2019s something really simple,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it can have a big impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Beyond a formal solution, though, Sinner\u2019s work also gets at the history of the building. Without interpreting the idea of a literary club too literally, she began asking herself, \u201cWhat does literature look like?\u201d \u201cWhat does The Grapes of Wrath look like?\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s different for every person. It\u2019s inside their head.\u201d Searching through a variety of illustrated books, ranging over a 40-year span, she began collaging disparate elements, creating \u201cimplied narratives\u201d that appear like the shifting images we create in our mind when we read a book. She says it\u2019s very similar to what is happening in Anderson\u2019s dance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no story,\u201d Anderson says of her work. \u201cBut because of how it\u2019s set up, someone is going to make one up.\u201d The same is true of Sinner\u2019s projections, which help fill the space and also suggest narrative. Layering individual elements, the pair will open up the possibilities for story without spelling out in black and white what the narrative is. \u201cYou get to choose why they are doing what they are doing,\u201d Anderson says of her dancers.<\/p>\n

Just days before the actual performance, the pair were able to finally access the building and begin working together directly. Basic structural elements had been established but multiple details still needed to be worked out. \u201cIt\u2019s like working on a giant moving mural,\u201d Sinner says, not without a hint of frustration. \u201cYou change one little thing and that shifts something else. You start one place and then everything evolves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being in the space makes theoretical considerations actual logistical problems. \u201cYou have to figure out how little lighting is needed to see the projections,\u201d Anderson says, \u201cbut how much is needed to see the dance.\u201d Those issues, though, are just one more opportunity for research and development. \u201cShould the curtains already be closed,\u201d Anderson says of the windows that surround the performance hall, \u201cor should we make that part of the piece?\u201d She has a dancer move to the windows to try it out. Sinner moves one of the curled ducts that serves as her light projection. The process goes on and the pair of artists appear to embrace the challenges and opportunities with grace and gusto.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Choreographer Ashley Anderson and visual artist Mary Sinner layer their talents at the Ladies Literary Club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":861,"featured_media":22683,"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":[10],"tags":[1253,1276],"class_list":["post-22672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","tag-ashley-anderson","tag-mary-sinner"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/llcblog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-13 00:19:47","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\/22672","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\/861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22672"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98228,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22672\/revisions\/98228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}