{"id":28502,"date":"2015-04-01T01:06:58","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T07:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=28502"},"modified":"2015-04-02T09:03:47","modified_gmt":"2015-04-02T15:03:47","slug":"shawn-rossiter-to-step-down-from-15-bytes-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/shawn-rossiter-to-step-down-from-15-bytes-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Shawn Rossiter to step down from 15 Bytes (April Fools’)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shawnrossiter2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

15 Bytes<\/em> founder and longtime editor Shawn Rossiter announced today that he\u2019ll be leaving the publication at the end of the summer. \u201cIt\u2019s been a great journey and I\u2019ve had a blast being so involved with Utah\u2019s art community, but it\u2019s time to move on and do something new,\u201d Rossiter said from the publication\u2019s office, where he was busy working on the April 2015 edition.<\/p>\n

Rossiter started Artists of Utah in 2001, after putting up a notice and sign-up sheet at the Sugar House Arts Festival. \u201cWe published our first edition of 15 Bytes<\/em> the first week of September that year. 9\/11 happened a few days later,\u201d he says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t exactly the best time to capture people\u2019s attention.\u201d Timing wasn\u2019t the only problem. The publication struggled in its early years, finding it difficult to secure funding. \u201cThere was really nothing like us going on at the time, so people didn\u2019t know what to make of us,\u201d he says. \u201cFacebook wasn\u2019t even a gleam in Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s narcissistic eye, and to get around the Internet people relied on hyperlinks more than Google searches [the company was only 3 years old]. So publishing a local, online art magazine was unchartered territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a six-month period in 2004 the publication even shut down. \u201cI suppose you could thank \u2014 or blame \u2014 Laura Durham for the fact we\u2019re still around,\u201d Rossiter says. Frustrated with the lack of community support, he had given up after three years. Then he heard about a workshop at the Utah Arts Council, where artists complained about the lack of a community nexus where artists could discuss what was going on in the community. Durham, who was a visual arts program coordinator for the Arts Council and was facilitating the workshop, got frustrated. \u201cShe stood up and said something to the effect of, \u2018You had that. Shawn Rossiter was doing it and it was called 15 Bytes<\/em> but you all didn\u2019t support it,\u2019\u201d Rossiter remembers. \u201cIt was having support like that, from Laura and others, that convinced me to give it another go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then the publication has continued to grow, with the financial support of members of the local community as well as foundation and governmental grants. \u201cWe produce more content now in two months than we did in all of that first year,\u201d Rossiter says. \u201cThe growth has been terrific to watch and it\u2019s really due to the great group of staff and volunteers we have.\u201d Rossiter notes that every year more than two dozen people provide content to the magazine. \u201cOther news outlets use us as the voice of record for the visual arts, we get cited in scholarly works, people even tell me they moved here in part because of the art scene they learned about in the magazine,\u201d Rossiter says.<\/p>\n

\"bookcover\"<\/a>\u201cI think the organization has matured enough that I can move on,\u201d Rossiter says about his plans to step down. He mentions various projects he\u2019d like to get involved in (\u201cmaybe I\u2019ll find something that actually pays some money\u201d). One that he has already pursued is literary translation. His first foray, a translation of the novel \u201cHoli\u2019s Day\u201d by Italian author Giovanni Prendingiro, is due out this fall from Aubrey House Press<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a genre-blending novel, part sci-fi, part historical fiction, set in the court of Pope Gregory.\u201d He says he\u2019s also started on a book of his own called 16 Bytes<\/em>. \u201cIt will have all the juicy stories about Utah\u2019s art community I\u2019ve learned about over the years but wasn\u2019t able to publish in 15 Bytes<\/em>. Of course I\u2019ll probably have to wait until after I\u2019m dead to publish it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rossiter will slowly transition out of his role as 15 Bytes<\/em> editor, but says August will be his last edition. Local artist Brad Slaugh has been named as interim editor until a full-time replacement can be found. Reached in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he has been on sabbatical for the past 9 months, Slaugh said, \u201cI really appreciate what Shawn has done over all these years. And I certainly want to respect the tone of the magazine he has established but I also think there are ways we could shake things up and attract new audiences.\u201d He says he\u2019s a big fan of The Onion<\/em>, and wants to see if it\u2019s possible to inject more humor and satire into 15 Bytes<\/em>. \u201cMaybe we could have an editorial cartoonist on staff \u2014 not anything dangerous like Charlie Hebdo<\/em>, but someone to stir the pot. Or maybe a regular columnist who looks at the shenanigans of the art world with a satirical slant. Or even just once a year, like for an April Fools\u2019 Day edition.\u201d<\/p>\n

We don’t want to see Laura Durham get frustrated again.<\/em>
\n HELP US RAISE $8,000 FOR OUR 2015 SPRING FUNDRAISER<\/em>
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15 Bytes founder and longtime editor Shawn Rossiter announced today that he\u2019ll be leaving the publication at the end of the summer. \u201cIt\u2019s been a great journey and I\u2019ve had a blast being so involved with Utah\u2019s art community, but it\u2019s time to move on and do something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bytes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/shawnrossiter2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-23 17:45:56","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\/28502","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28513,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28502\/revisions\/28513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}