{"id":35753,"date":"2017-11-16T22:17:45","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T04:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35753"},"modified":"2025-11-11T08:33:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T15:33:32","slug":"big-themes-in-small-towns-snow-college-faculty-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/big-themes-in-small-towns-snow-college-faculty-exhibit\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow College Faculty Exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Compiling faculty shows is a balancing act between honoring the artists\u2019 personal styles and still telling a story with an exhibition. An artistic gem in this genre can be found in Sanpete County, in the form of the\u00a02017 Snow College Visual Arts Faculty Biennial Exhibition<\/em>. It\u2019s a hodgepodge of more than a dozen artists coming together to explore media, faith, fantasy, and urbanization. Snow College may be a small institution located in a small town, but these artists are dealing with some really big themes in their artwork.<\/h4>\n

Several pieces in the show focus on women and contemporary female conversations, like Kelly Brook\u2019s \u201cMovement Studies\/(Un)Done,\u201d which focuses on the \u201csecond shift\u201d \u2013 women who work outside the home but continue to do housework when they come home. Featuring knitting and abstract drawing to illustrate concepts of \u201cdoneness\u201d and \u201cun-doneness,\u201d her contributions also include a videotape of her at home running around the house to take care of lingering household duties. Doneness is not really applicable to housework \u2014 there are always dirty laundry, dishes, hungry children, or dirty toilets \u2014 and her looped video is an endless stream of her performing these duties over and over again, never quite completing one task because of a multitude of other necessities.<\/h4>\n
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Movement Studies\/(Un)Done\u201d, Kelly Brook.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Also interested in contemporary feminism is Amy Jorgensen, with her piece \u201c(from the series) Blood of Women\u201d \u2014 a linen napkin stained with wine and blood creating the shape of female genitalia. Recently, a lot of researchers in the psychological field have published papers debunking \u201cperiod brain,\u201d which is the stereotype that women on their periods are less likely to think clearly, control their emotions, or be able to problem solve. There is no statistically significant difference in problem solving for women who are menstruating versus any other time in their cycle. This research, like Jorgensen\u2019s piece, is a celebration of womanhood and also a normalization of it\u2014there is no need to be afraid of female menstruation.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cYou Are Not Anonymous (Privacy Should be Default),\u201d Haynes Goodsell<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

All of the photographers at the SCVA show deal with location and searching. Christiana Ruth\u2019s \u201cSecond Home\u201d is a double-exposed photograph of an alley between two apartment buildings combined with a desert scene \u2014 a great evocation of Utah living, where most of us live in urban or semi-urban settings but are drawn to the wilderness areas that surround us The nature photography of Paul A. Gardner features a double rainbow near the western edge of Colorado, a rare and beautiful sight. Most poignant of these pieces may be Haynes Goodsell\u2019s \u201cYou Are Not Anonymous (Privacy Should be Default),\u201d which calls out to the integrity of dating app developers and also to their users, who should protect themselves from uncomfortable situations: Arising from an experience of sexual harassment, Goodsell\u2019s photograph depicts a man who exposed himself to Goodsell on the train after finding his location on a dating app.<\/h4>\n

Artists Dustin Hansen and Robert DeGroff both illustrate areas of fantasy; Hansen with his elaborate, digitally painted catacombs and pull statues; and DeGroff with an intriguing etching that shows an unrooted patch of land floating above the clouds. Also playing with the idea of reality vs. fantasy is Adam Larsen, with his \u201cLost Worlds,\u201d a relief and screen print of a hand playing video games: with the rise of smartphones and other portable technology, we as a society often have more of a connection with the digitally created world than the physical one.<\/h4>\n

Ron Richmond and Scott Allred share an interest in the use of religious allusions. Richmond\u2019s \u201cHeaven and Earth\u201d depicts a woman with a pewter halo around her head, possibly Mary at the moment of the Annunciation. The quality of his painting is stunningly realistic but also carries the artist\u2019s particular voice in the textured background and soft edges of her drapery. Her face is vulnerable but determined, both soft and hard. Allred\u2019s \u201cOde to Leonardo da Vinci (Benois Madonna)\u201d is more directly religious, an obvious Madonna and child scene. Mary wears Renaissance dress, the Christ child is nude, and the setting is a house or castle \u2014 which is all standard, but unlike the da Vinci original, Allred\u2019s painting is in sepia tones. The muted color palette feels almost photographic, more realistic, as do the interactions of Christ and Mary. It is a reimagining of what the relationship of Mary and Christ would be if taken out of the rigid, highly symbolic Renaissance tradition.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cLost Worlds,\u201d Adam Larsen.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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\u201cHeaven and Earth,\u201d Ron Richmond<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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\u201cOde to Leonardo da Vinci (Benois Madonna)\u201d Scott Allred<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

This riffing on historical sources plays out in other works in the show. Kim Gordon has created a book made completely out of old church programs called \u201cQuiet Codex,\u201d and Zane Anderson includes a detailed and interesting illustration of a pelvis in his \u201cPelvic Girdle.\u201d In \u201cRaison d\u2019Etre\u2014Reason for Existence,\u201d Kristy Carter has drawn several faces of women from art history using a hierarchal scale, with the more important figures in her artistic development rendered at a larger size. The drawing and composition are not particularly sophisticated, but the importance of the woman in art history is clear in this piece.<\/h4>\n

For Brad Taggart, time stands still. Or seems to. His mixed-metal sculpture \u201cSuspended Time\u201d compiles several circles and rods in the form of a larger, clock-like portion and a pendulum that has been stopped. While the sculpture has no moving parts, the concentric circles seem to move, constantly rotating even as the pendulum stands still.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cRaison d\u2019Etre\u2014Reason for Existence,\u201d Kristy Carter<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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\u201cSuspended Time,\u201d Brad Taggart<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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\u201cContemplative,\u201d Carl Purcell<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Lastly, the featured work of\u00a0 Carl Purcell and Abe Kimball emphasize the skill of Snow College\u2019s drawing and printmaking professors. In \u201cContemplative,\u201d a pen and ink study of an elderly man and glasses, Purcell highlights the particular quality of this medium by a simple, slightly abstracted representation, keeping the ink light in most places and including more casual scribbles and curves. Kimball is represented by a number of prints, most notable the lithograph of an elderly man and his dog, \u201cGuck and Equerry.\u201d The composition and pose of the male figure is very \u201cAmerican Gothic\u201d with his central placement and single hand out in front holding a rake full of hay. The composition is separated across eight pieces of paper with about an inch of space between them as if the viewer is looking at Guck and Equerry from a window in a house. It is a picturesque view of American farmlands, but also the difficult conditions of this work can be seen in the old farmer\u2019s eyes.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cGuck and Equerry,\u201d Abe Kimball.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Faculty shows are a great way to see the current skills and interests of visual\u2013arts faculty around the country. The faculty of Snow College may not have as many members as other educational institutions in Utah, but their contributions are important and valid. These pieces spark conversations about work\/life balance, environmentalism, media usage, and much more.<\/h4>\n

\u201c2017 Snow College Visual Arts Faculty Biennial Exhibition,\u201d\u00a0Snow College Art Gallery<\/a>, Ephraim, through Dec. 15.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Compiling faculty shows is a balancing act between honoring the artists\u2019 personal styles and still telling a story with an exhibition. An artistic gem in this genre can be found in Sanpete County, in the form of the\u00a02017 Snow College Visual Arts Faculty Biennial Exhibition. It\u2019s a hodgepodge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1567,"featured_media":37785,"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":[19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/scag_1500x500-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 22:20:40","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\/35753","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\/1567"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35753"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98454,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35753\/revisions\/98454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}