{"id":37868,"date":"2017-10-03T12:23:55","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T18:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=37868"},"modified":"2025-11-04T17:22:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T00:22:16","slug":"bewitched-by-stuff-joe-carter-looks-closely-to-find-the-humanity-of-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/bewitched-by-stuff-joe-carter-looks-closely-to-find-the-humanity-of-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Bewitched by Stuff: Joe Carter Looks Closely To Find the Humanity of Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Joe Carter in his studio. Photo by Simon Blundell.<\/p>\n

Joe Carter might not look like a \u201cBurning Man\u201d regular, but this summer\u2019s gathering is the first he has missed in years. \u201cWe went to Element 11, instead,\u201d he says, referencing Utah\u2019s new, cozier version of the enormous desert happening.<\/h4>\n

He really got into the event that launched in July at Stargazer Ranch in Box Elder County, handing out bacon and from-scratch blueberry pancakes to folks who wandered by his campsite. A few firefighters stopped, but wanted assurance that breakfast would be drug-free. \u201cI told them the pancakes were just like Mom used to make,\u201d Carter recalls with a grin.<\/h4>\n
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This 30\u2033 x 40\u2033 oil titled \u201cTangle\u201d was purchased by SLCC in 2012 for their fashion merchandising department. Courtesy Phillips Gallery.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Personally, I never would have suspected anything less (or more) from Joe Carter: he doesn\u2019t resemble your stereotypical \u201cartist\u201d but rather the electrical engineer he once was \u2013 before returning to school for a second bachelor\u2019s and a new career. Shaved head topped by a baseball cap (he has quite the collection), Carter\u2019s tall figure invariably sports chinos, comfortable shoes and wire-rimmed glasses. Yeah, way rad.<\/h4>\n

While he often has work to do on a couple of rental properties, Carter mostly spends his days painting (though he did drop in at Comic Con before our interview), or trolling estate sales and KSL.com for stuff he might want to paint for the three galleries that represent him and always, always need more of his work. He\u2019s with Park Gallery in Carmel, Calif.; Terzian in Park City; and his new show opens Oct. 20 at Phillips in Salt Lake City.<\/h4>\n

Easily met, always upbeat, humble, and just a genuinely nice guy, Carter finds beauty in common objects like brooms, a spool of thread, a gasoline engine, or a handful of old, dented pencils. He prefers items that are worn and well used when selecting them for a canvas. \u201cI like things that have been handled a lot and have the marks to show it. Usually I see a human quality in the subject, and I try to create a tuned-in, saturated reality,\u201d he writes in an artist statement.<\/h4>\n
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This 4\u2032 x 5\u2032 oil painted in March 2017, is ideal for taking the viewer inside the world of an old Remington typewriter, Carter\u2019s specialty. A work this detailed can take well over 200\u00a0hours to complete. Courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

He might buy an old Corona or Underwood typewriter on eBay and set it up at his Millcreek-area home under a light in the basement studio, then carefully capture what he sees in oil, \u201cas well as I can.\u201d Typewriters are favorite subjects for his brush:<\/h4>\n

Typewriters are very three-dimensional; the old ones are open framed, you can see all the mechanics in them. They have a form and function \u2013 they\u2019re beautiful. They have steel wheels and gears and doodads \u2013 that\u2019s stuff I like. I like machines. I like things that have a little world in them that I can explore and bring a painting back out of.<\/h4>\n

And Carter wants his viewers to enter the world of whatever he depicts, which is what led Bonnie Phillips to accept him into the gallery when he was still in school: \u201cJoe paints common objects in an exploration that invites the viewer to make their own relationship to the objects he has chosen and presented. This is a very engaging approach and is why I initially was and continue to be interested and supportive of his work,\u201d she says.<\/h4>\n

Phillips Gallery director Meri DeCaria finds that Carter\u2019s work sells \u201cbecause of his technical mastery. People buy Joe Carter\u2019s work, too, because of the connection they make to mundane things from the past and the way he is able to glorify them: old typewriters, bottles of screws,\u201d toys, or buttons and other miscellaneous items seen through glass.<\/h4>\n
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A so-far-untitled 2017 24\u2033 x 24\u2033 jar of \u201cstuff\u201d includes tire valve stem caps and an aspirin tin. Courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n

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On rare occasions, she says, \u201cwhimsy doesn\u2019t work.\u201d There was a plastic toy truck they couldn\u2019t find a client for. And that jar of bolts Carter so loves to paint \u201cis really an incredible piece but you have to find a client who loves the way something is painted, not necessarily the subject matter.\u201d<\/h4>\n

The new show will, of course, feature a typewriter; also an old movie projector; a jar that contains some caps from valve stems for tires; a radio tube; two stamps; some spools of sewing thread; a little toy truck; and other small items the artist couldn\u2019t recall when we spoke. Carter is especially enthused about the handle of an old saw he was working on: \u201cSomeone taped it and it\u2019s got dots of paint on it,\u201d he says.<\/h4>\n

For the most part, painting is a job for this artist, and one he does exceedingly well. Carter is meticulous in detail, a trait that probably stems from his days creating miniature transistors and resistors. A 4\u2019 x 4\u2019 square painting can take 200 hours to complete. \u201cI\u2019ll spend a couple hours doing one key on a typewriter and 26 keys takes 10 days,\u201d he says. \u201cI want everything to be right. I don\u2019t ever say, \u2018Oh screw it, I\u2019m done.\u2019\u201d<\/h4>\n

He likes his work to sing and doesn\u2019t leave much tension and few discordant passages for the viewer. \u201cI don\u2019t like cacophony necessarily. When my eye travels across the visual plane it has to spin through,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve got to remove those little visual stops that keep you from soaring and gliding. I end up being tight because I do want it to sing. I\u2019ll occasionally leave a little tension in, but not very much,\u201d Carter says of his work.<\/h4>\n
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While he truly enjoys chipping in on a model at Saturday drawing sessions at the U, he hasn\u2019t been able to participate there for six or seven months because he has been preparing for the upcoming Phillips show. \u201cI like the figure and I\u2019d like to do some landscapes at some point,\u201d Carter reflects. He does some portraiture (of family and friends) but mostly sticks to still life.<\/h4>\n

Born in Havre, Montana, where his father, a construction worker, was helping to build a dam, Carter recalls happy childhood months spent in a tent on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, where his mother seemed to remain calm enough while he, his three younger brothers and a sister played along the very edge of that chasm while his father worked large earth equipment on a project not far away. \u201cEverything was raw and loud and fun,\u201d Carter states. Mostly, though, he was reared in Sandy, back when it was wild and undeveloped farmland replete with frogs and pollywogs, though new neighborhoods were starting to go in.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>He drew well as a kid, even more so in high school when he won awards (one at the Art Barn at Finch Lane) for his work, but he didn\u2019t think you could make money as an artist and wanted to one day have a family and a good job to support them, so looked in other directions for a career.<\/h4>\n

Carter graduated from Murray High in 1972 and followed a younger brother into the Navy two years later, thinking he would see more of the world than just Portland and the Philippines. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a master plan. I just did things,\u201d he says. Fortunately, he did not see anything of Vietnam during that era, and his tour netted some college money and the GI Bill, which he used to enroll at the University of Utah in 1977. His game plan simply involved inquiring as to what college had resulted in the most people getting hired the year before. Electrical engineering, or EE, was the hands-down winner and that\u2019s what Carter earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in, in 1981. He, too, was immediately hired upon graduation and found that \u201cI was in my tribe, for sure.\u201d<\/h4>\n

He thought EE was like learning magic. \u201cWe live in a fantastic universe and that stuff is bewitching. And it\u2019s difficult. I was proud of myself.\u201d Though his father had attended college, \u201cI was the first in my family to get a degree,\u201d he remembers.<\/h4>\n

He first worked for Leeds and Northrup, a major engineering firm, designing and building complicated circuit boards used by power companies. That resulted in a nearly 20-year career in the field doing \u201cabout everything,\u201d eventually including artificial organs. \u201cI liked all that stuff. I liked the people. They were nerds; they were kind of like me. They were smart; they liked to read. I miss that in art \u2013 having friendships. You sit there working by yourself, talking to your paintbrushes.\u201d<\/h4>\n

But he listens to books on tape while he works \u2013 he estimates it\u2019s probably his 25th<\/sup>time through\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/em>\u00a0trilogy. He liked Byatt\u2019s\u00a0Possession<\/em>; Rushdie\u2019s\u00a0Midnight\u2019s Children<\/em>; Neil Gaiman; and enjoys all kinds of science fiction. \u201cThen I\u2019ll grab a book on the history of the Bible, or ancient civilization, particle physics, or ancient Samaria. I like all that stuff, too.\u201d
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Pipe wrenches hang from the ceiling of Joe Carter\u2019s basement studio, along with paintbrushes, whisk brooms, radio-controlled airplanes and reams of faucet handles on wires. A vacuum cleaner drops down from the joists. \u201cThe toys have gotten out of control,\u201d he says. \u201cAfter the show, I\u2019m going to clean it out.\u201d There are little toy trucks, and tractors and bulldozers. \u201cThe truck turned out not to be a good subject. A pencil is better.\u201d Jars of rubber bands, sugar cubes, walnuts, and dill. \u201cThe dill is so complex I\u2019ve been afraid to paint it.\u201d Ultraman, Godzilla, a cast-iron Indian, just a ton of \u201cwhimsical \u2019junque\u2019 \u2013 spelled that way,\u201d the artist says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In 1984, he married Jane Benvegnu, who worked at\u00a0The Salt Lake Tribune<\/em>\u00a0as assistant controller, later controller \u2013 a big-deal job that she gave up a few years later to focus on their three above-average children: Nancy, a Westminster graduate is a patient advocate at the Maliheh Free Clinic and lives at home; Mary, a graduate of NYU (she did a year\u2019s study abroad in London) is assistant to a managing partner at famed movie-star reps Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles; and Alice, a Sterling Scholar in math, earned a bachelor\u2019s from Northwestern, worked for quite a while in marine biology at Woods Hole in Massachusetts and is pursuing a Ph.D. at Duke in limnology, the ecology of streams.<\/h4>\n

\u201cI always daydreamed I would be explaining how a carburetor worked to a little boy, but girls are super-fun to raise. None of them are visual artists but they like art and they are proud of me,\u201d Carter says. \u201cThey want me to have a website.\u201d All seem to truly enjoy one another\u2019s company and frequently travel together or attend concerts (recently Joe hit Robert Plant with his girls, and Joe and Jane are seen at most of the local rock venues \u2013 in keeping with his enviable collection of vinyl and CDs).<\/h4>\n
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At 24\u2033 x 18\u2033 this 2017 Sylvania radio tube work was the first Carter painted for his new show at Phillips Gallery. Courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n

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He took a few art classes at the U while he was getting his engineering degree, got good feedback on his work, and in the mid-1990s had a boss who gave him time off to take one art class each quarter. So when he quit in the fall of 1998, announcing that he was \u201cgoing to go be an artist,\u201d it couldn\u2019t have come as a huge surprise.<\/h4>\n

While he remembers several classes fondly (one from Bob Kleinschmidt, another from Paul Heath, one from Maureen O\u2019Hara Ure, one from Sam Wilson) he remains especially grateful to two of his professors for lessons learned: Tony Smith for \u201chis genius as a painter and a person\u201d and Paul Davis for mantras the artist utilizes daily: \u201cFlip it like a pancake.\u201d \u201cMix paint on your palette, not on your canvas.\u201d Davis had his students do a drawing and then paint over it in one color in monochrome paint \u201cto get the lights and darks right, to get the values right and I still do that to this day,\u201d says Carter. \u201cEvery one of my paintings is painted usually in burnt umber . . . until I get those lights and darks just nailed and I\u2019ll put a wash on and then I\u2019ll go in with color and I keep the values the same. Paul Davis taught us to squint to see the values. I look through my fingers to see the light change.\u201d<\/h4>\n

By spring 2000, Carter had his BFA, a gallery at Phillips and a new purpose in life.<\/h4>\n

\u201cWhat I do with my work is show you beauty you may not have seen before; that junk is beautiful,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t want to make a painting of a Batman action figure because you can buy the action figure for 10 bucks so why would you buy a painting of it? I want to show you that this lawn mower engine that\u2019s greasy and dirty is beautiful as a piece of art. Or that someone\u2019s handled this wrench over and over and left this mark and it\u2019s as beautiful as any nude. That these scratches and dents in the right light are what\u2019s really cool.<\/h4>\n

\u201cGuns,\u201d he muses. \u201cI could probably paint the heck out of old guns. They\u2019ve got all the elements. But they are way too overloaded with baggage. And Jane wouldn\u2019t let one in the house.<\/h4>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m done, I want it to be a painting that\u00a0I<\/em>\u00a0want to hang,\u201d Carter says firmly.<\/h4>\n
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This 2017 4\u2032 x 4\u2032 oil of an old projector is part of a new show opening Oct. 20 at Phillips. Courtesy the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Joe Carter & Nancy Vorm,\u00a0Phillips Gallery, Oct. 20-Nov. 10, Gallery Stroll reception Oct. 20, 6-9 p.m. with an artists\u2019 talk at 5 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Carter in his studio. Photo by Simon Blundell. Joe Carter might not look like a \u201cBurning Man\u201d regular, but this summer\u2019s gathering is the first he has missed in years. \u201cWe went to Element 11, instead,\u201d he says, referencing Utah\u2019s new, cozier version of the enormous desert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":37869,"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":[853],"class_list":["post-37868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-joe-carter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/JoeCarter-95-1200x800.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 15:56:02","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\/37868","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\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37868"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97701,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37868\/revisions\/97701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}