{"id":36695,"date":"2018-03-18T21:04:03","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T03:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=36695"},"modified":"2018-11-23T10:43:29","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T16:43:29","slug":"trent-alvey-the-art-of-spontaneity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/trent-alvey-the-art-of-spontaneity\/","title":{"rendered":"Trent Alvey: The Art of Spontaneity"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2013,\u00a0Trent Alvey was selected by 200 of her peers as one of \u201cUtah\u2019s 15 most influential artists.\u201d The following profile appeared in\u00a0<\/em>Utah\u2019s 15: The State\u2019s Most Influential Artists, published by Artists of Utah in 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Photo by Zoe and Robert Rodriguez.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Every day Trent Alvey walks up the hillside near her home in Emigration Canyon. She thinks of it as her own little Walden where she can reset her focus for the day. \u201cEven if you go the same time every day, the light changes or the season changes,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt\u2019s the same and different simultaneously.\u201d For Alvey, this daily ritual invites the spontaneity she requires of herself as an artist.<\/h4>\n

Spontaneity is something Alvey values because with it she can forget about the past, disregard the future and simply dwell in the present\u2014and as an artist, she believes the present is the moment of creation. She talks about a Fresh Air interview with Tom Waits she heard several years ago. His thoughts about being visited by the Muse stayed with her because she can relate to those fleeting moments of inspiration. She is often bombarded with an onslaught of ideas herself, and the ones she can sort out in the moment are the ones that survive. \u201cThey have an expiration date. If you don\u2019t do it, they lose their potency. You might revisit it later, but usually those ideas are fleeting.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Alvey was born in central Utah and remembers having a lot of time alone in an expansive landscape, which she believes had a profound effect on her love of the land and its ability to inspire her. Her father was a district ranger for the Manti La Sal National Forest. When he retired, her family moved to Salt Lake City. Alvey was in sixth grade at the time, and it was then that she began taking more creative opportunities. She was a thoughtful child and creativity was a way to make sense of the world around her and put things in perspective\u2014a way of processing. As she moved into junior high school, she met two teachers that she would forever hold dear as mentors: Claudia Sisemore and David Chaplin. \u201cClaudia was my creative writing teacher at Hillside Junior High and she gave me an amazing look at how creativity can save your life. It was her first year so she was still really spontaneous about her work and her teaching. She\u2019s a painter, filmmaker and teacher and she\u2019s dedicated her whole life to helping people understand creativity.\u201d David Chaplin was her art teacher. Later in life, Alvey would honor both these individuals by organizing exhibitions for each, celebrating their influence on those who studied under them.<\/h4>\n

They\u2019re not the only artists for whom she\u2019s devoted her time to organizing an exhibition. When Tom Mulder, one of her fellow artists at Captain Captain Studios in Salt Lake City, passed away, Alvey and some other artists at the studio sorted through his hundreds of paintings to organize an exhibit at the Rio Gallery in an effort to sell his work. \u201cHis brother was going to haul his paintings to the DI!\u201d she exclaims. \u201cHis brother, who didn\u2019t really get along with Tom, came to the exhibit and said, \u2018I didn\u2019t realize Tom was a real artist. This is beautiful.\u2019 Unfortunately he came to that realization after Tom had died, but it was a good thing.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Alvey doesn\u2019t necessarily like to think of herself as the \u201csocial coordinator\u201d when it comes to artists, but many Utah artists have her to thank for bringing them together. Because it took her so long to truly immerse herself as an artist she believes she has had more time to be indulgent, so now she spends a lot of her time making things happen for other artists in addition to herself. She loves the collaboration and she loves bringing artists out into the community. \u201cArtists tend to retreat to their studios or classrooms,\u201d she laughs. \u201cThe students learn a lot but the community often misses out.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Becoming a bona fide \u201cartist\u201d did take her a while. She graduated from Salt Lake Community College with a degree in graphic design. \u201cI wanted to do artwork, but I didn\u2019t think there was a way I could make a living,\u201d she admits. In her late 20s she worked at Westminster College as their graphic designer. She took full advantage of her free tuition benefit and indulged in a double major studying both communications and art. \u201cFour days a week I studied with Don Doxey. He was the master of surfaces. I also took a figure drawing class from him four days a week for four years,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have to keep practicing or you lose it.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Even though she immersed herself in artwork every day, Alvey\u2019s practicality dominated and she ended up starting her own graphic design business. In retrospect, it only seems natural that she would gravitate to working for nonprofit arts organizations. She did design work for the Sundance Film Festival, the Utah Arts Council, and others, all the while continuing her art on the side with maybe an exhibit once or twice a year. One of her first pieces was\u00a0Toaster\u00a0<\/em>Worship<\/em>,<\/em>\u00a0from the \u201cOut of the Land\u201d exhibition that showed at the Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., in 1993. That piece is now part of the permanent collection at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. This dual lifestyle continued until her husband, Dennis Sizemore, had a horrific accident in 2000. She went with him to a trauma hospital in Seattle for a month and by the time they came home her business had fallen apart. It was then she realized what she really cared about was creating art, so in 2002 she dropped graphic design and made artwork her main focus.<\/h4>\n

Her husband has also had a profound influence on where she directs her artistic energy. His organization, Round River Conservation Studies, has taken her to many underdeveloped countries where they research conservation area design. They\u2019ve traveled to Namibia and Botswana, but it was in 2011 in Uganda that Alvey found her most rewarding project.<\/h4>\n

\u201cA friend of mine told me about an orphanage that would like me to come do art projects. She suggested we do a mural, but I didn\u2019t want to do a mural.\u201d So Alvey decided to bring cloth to make fetish dolls and then let the children at the orphanage use what they had to finish the dolls. Each doll is very different, but they all worked together, contributed something to each doll. \u201cI realized how much joy the kids had; they had been through horrific circumstances. Each had an astounding story.\u201d Alvey wanted to understand how people endure the horrors of war and genocide. \u201cWe have an amazing ability to adapt and get through and move on,\u201d she says. \u201cFor me, it was based with the children because they weren\u2019t in denial about the awful things they\u2019ve experienced, but they were able<\/h4>\n

to have these two dichotomous things going on at once: their horrific memories and their spontaneous joy of being alive.\u201d She wrote an essay about the project that helped her understand a lot about being human. \u201cSometimes you just discover a joy that\u2019s really fundamental and sometimes we, living in a more developed country, miss it because we\u2019re distracted.<\/h4>\n

I realized how much more important the children\u2019s joy is given the dictators they are subjected to.\u201d When she got back, she worked with Glenda Bradley at 15th Street Gallery to put on an exhibition with the fetish dolls made by the children. The proceeds from all sales paid for a year\u2019s worth of food and clothing for the orphans. \u201cIt all emerged rather spontaneously, \u201dshe says. As it should.<\/h4>\n

This project would continue to have relevance as she further explored the idea of evil dictators and the dichotomy of horror and happiness. Some might consider this \u201csocially conscious\u201d artwork exhausting; but, because it is born of spontaneity, Alvey finds it invigorating. In fact, much of her work seems to bend toward a social issue, and she often sees her art as a way for her to present information. In 2007, her piece \u201cCreator Destroyer,\u201d that first showed at the Pickle Company for an exhibition called\u00a0Exposed<\/em>, investigated the legacy of atmospheric nuclear testing in central Utah in the 1950s, \u201860s and \u201870s. It was a way for her to investigate her own background, as she thinks some health problems she\u2019s had can be traced back to the open-air testing when she lived there as a child. The piece showed again at Brigham Young University\u2019s Museum of Art in 2013 for the \u201cWork to Do\u201d exhibition, this time with additional units to make it a room installation.<\/h4>\n

Alvey often incorporates science and physics into her work. She\u2019s presented information about sacred geometry, synchronicity, frequency, and the science of emergent phenomenon. \u201cI like science because it connects pieces of knowledge. Life feels so sporadic at times, so for me, artwork is the only way I can have an expanse of concepts and distill it down to something digestible.\u201d In addition to installation, Alvey also paints, and she finds one practice informs the other: inspiration visits while she\u2019s working in the other medium, she says, and sometimes she will stop what she\u2019s doing to carry out<\/h4>\n

the idea brought to her by the Muse. Alvey speaks of Willem de Kooning\u2019s idea of \u201cslipping glimpses,\u201d where an idea doesn\u2019t come to you fully formed\u2014you get a spark, rather, and it grows from there. She does, however, find her installations more rewarding than painting. \u201cIt\u2019s fun because when you\u2019re using objects it\u2019s about gathering the pieces that speak to each other, and then if you\u2019re lucky, you can hear a little joyous chant.\u201d<\/h4>\n

She may not always have an exhibition on the horizon, but Alvey is always working on something, and coincidentally, those things will often meet up. \u201cIt\u2019s so delightful to have this be my occupation,\u201d she says. She admits working in a building like Captain Captain, with numerous artists, helps motivate her to keep working. \u201cThere\u2019s a fear of being labeled as a hobby artist if you\u2019re out of your studio for more than a month,\u201d she laughs. \u201cSo I feel the peer pressure to keep coming in. The other artists are hardworking and very productive. When you do this full time you start to see periods when you\u2019re being productive and when you\u2019re being unproductive.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Whether she is working toward something or not, Trent Alvey will continue to take the same walk up Emigration Canyon and keep her mind open to see what spontaneous idea comes next. \u201cYou can have a lot of ideas, but there are only a few you want to bring into the physical world,\u201d she explains. The ideas may manifest themselves in her own artwork, or perhaps in a collaborative exhibit. Either way, the Muse will serve her well. \u201cArtists are happiest in that present moment of creativity,\u201d she says. \u201cAt least I am.\u201d<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2013,\u00a0Trent Alvey was selected by 200 of her peers as one of \u201cUtah\u2019s 15 most influential artists.\u201d The following profile appeared in\u00a0Utah\u2019s 15: The State\u2019s Most Influential Artists, published by Artists of Utah in 2014.   Every day Trent Alvey walks up the hillside near her home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":36696,"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":[17,14],"tags":[323,1400],"class_list":["post-36695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-trent-alvey","tag-utahs-15"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/2013_01_09_Trent-Alvey-for-15bytes-8012-1935-final-edit-AdobeRGB.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 22:04:50","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\/36695","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\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36695"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40129,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36695\/revisions\/40129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}