{"id":40038,"date":"2018-11-12T22:18:07","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T04:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=40038"},"modified":"2018-12-11T13:44:46","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T19:44:46","slug":"dreaming-in-deseret-ryan-perkins-embraces-this-strange-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/dreaming-in-deseret-ryan-perkins-embraces-this-strange-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Dreaming in Deseret: Ryan Perkins Embraces This Strange Place"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Detail of “Starman.”<\/p><\/div>\n

Ryan Perkins\u2019 great-great-great-grandaddy may have been Brigham Young\u2019s brother, but he\u2019s not sure. So begins his artist statement for Parallel Lives, Misremembered Pasts, Revelation, Heartbreak & Lore<\/em>, Perkins\u2019 exhibit currently at the Gallery at Library Square. Which seems rather flippant or careless for an artist statement. And yes, that sense is probably a desired effect, but that one line may also reveal quite a bit of what Perkins is about in this exhibit. It says he\u2019s a local boy, for one (in fact, rather than simply saying he\u2019s from Salt Lake City, Perkins goes on to claim Sugar House as his \u2018hood, an embrace of hyper-localism and sense of place); and makes a nod to the Mormon history and folklore of the state, with its emphasis on religion, prominent leaders and family relationships. A nod, but not a serious one.<\/h4>\n

Perkins has a degree in sculpture from the University of Utah, and splits his time between the digital \u2014 to pay the bills he works as a graphic artist at the Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah where he creates illustrations and animations to explain scientific concepts \u2014 and the physical \u2014 feeling compelled, in his free time, to make art, he creates prints, sculpture, and furniture, all with a quirky sense of humor. In writing about Perkins\u2019 Westish animations in a 15 Bytes article in 2013<\/a>, Geoff Wichert pointed out that the elements of his stories are not clearly defined nor explained, and don\u2019t need to be \u2014 that seeking out an answer might even ruin the comic effect. That strategy doesn\u2019t satisfy in the library show, however. These pieces feel like they hold a hidden knowledge, even if it\u2019s only an inside joke that might be illuminated if we only knew a little bit more.<\/h4>\n
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“Memento Mori”<\/p><\/div>\n

Almost all the works employ the Deseret Alphabet, a phonemic alphabet developed under the direction of Brigham Young that was intended to help the diverse immigrants coming to Utah from Europe and the Pacific Islands learn how to speak English. It\u2019s a trope other Utah artists have used: it\u2019s ubiquitous in Bob Moss\u2019 work; Ed Bateman has used it in his digital prints; and Trent Call sprayed it on his Acme Co. mural on 600 West (look at the latter and imagine if Deseret had become its own nation, and our billboards, buses and street signs were all bearing the script). The alphabet was short-lived (it was pushed for about a decade), ultimately a failure, and the average member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (you know, Mormons) won\u2019t even know of its existence; but it has become a sort of shorthand for visual artists, a nod to the quirky history and folklore of the Beehive State \u2014 \u201cMondo Utah\u201d in Trent Harris\u2019 terminology.<\/h4>\n

In Perkins\u2019 work, it may not appear to be much more than that. Take the time to translate the Deseret glyphs that appear on the work (Perkins has supplied a pronunciation table for the alphabet) and you\u2019ll find that, in most cases, he\u2019s simply spelling out the title of the piece. So, in a tondo work where a skull lies half buried in the soil, grass growing through the eye cavity, the Deseret characters spell out \u201cMemento Mori,\u201d a textual gloss that doesn\u2019t provide anything we couldn\u2019t have already gleaned from the image itself.<\/h4>\n
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“Whiskey Street”<\/p><\/div>\n

Things are opened up a bit more in \u201cWhiskey Street,\u201d where the phrase \u201cWhiskey Rye I Cry\u201d (if my Deseret is correct) is spelled out around a two-story saloon, which bears the name \u201cWhiskey Street.\u201d A quick Google search reveals an establishment of that name in Salt Lake City whose website explains that they took their moniker from a stretch of what would become known as Main Street filled with bars and liquor stores, where even Brigham Young was known to purchase his spirits.<\/h4>\n

\u201cFlame of Death, Fire of Light\u201d is spelled out around the image of a white salamander in the work by that title \u2014 a reference to the supposed occult qualities associated with the salamander, which, in local terms, leads us to the deadly Mark Hofmann case of the 1980s and a letter about the origins of Mormonism that turned out to be a forgery (though, as LDS historian Richard Bushman has explored in his Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling<\/em>, the folk magic milieu of the prophet\u2019s life it was based upon is true enough).<\/h4>\n
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“True Sight”<\/p><\/div>\n

The \u201cTrue Sight\u201d title of another piece might suggest a similar folk-magic reference, though it could also refer to a magic spell in the popular role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons which has received renewed attention in the Netflix series \u201cStranger Things\u201d (the spell provides the ability to see the world as it really is). In this work, however, the visuals are saying as much as the text. \u201cTrue Sight\u201d is an illuminated sculpture showing a single eye, suggestive of The Eye of Providence, or all-seeing eye. In Perkins\u2019 case, however, the surrounding triangle, meant to symbolize divinity, has been transformed into a heart shape: God is Love.<\/h4>\n

The most ambitious piece in the show is \u201cStarman,\u201d a multipanel comic narrative. Read left to right, the work shows a cosmic baker traveling through space, plucking out a pinch of the cosmos, taking it back to his planet, mixing it with dough, forming it into the shape of men, baking them and then, \u201cKerploom,\u201d sending them off into space in the final panel. If things are quiet enough in the gallery, you\u2019ll also catch the faint recording of a choral piece. It\u2019s the LDS hymn, \u201cIf You Could Hie to Kolob,\u201d which references the name, identified in the LDS scripture, \u201cThe Book of Abraham,\u201d of the heavenly body closest to God\u2019s throne, i.e. his home. It\u2019s a rather marginal piece of Mormon theology \u2014 you\u2019re unlikely to hear mention of it during Sunday School at your local wardhouse (though it was used to name a canyon in Zion National Park) \u2014 but Perkins\u2019 visual narrative is a succinct if not particularly reverent rendering of the LDS concept of pre-earthly creation: the forming of existing \u201cintelligences\u201d into spirit beings that are then sent to Earth to receive physical bodies.<\/h4>\n
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The final panel of “Starman.”<\/p><\/div>\n

Mark Twain said that no religion could survive ridicule, which may be why religious people, even ones known to engage in self-deprecating humor, bristle when their God or religion is spoken of in anything but hushed tones. But ridicule doesn\u2019t seem to be what Perkins is about. He\u2019s poking fun and making light, but it seems to be done in a fairly convivial spirit, with an embrace of the history, people and culture of this place that he says is \u201ca little bit strange.\u201d But he also admits that it\u2019s \u201cawful tough to beat.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Parallel Lives, Misremembered Pasts, Revelation, Heartbreak & Lore<\/em>,\u00a0mixed media by Ryan Perkins, Gallery at Library Square<\/a>, Salt Lake City, until Nov. 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan Perkins\u2019 great-great-great-grandaddy may have been Brigham Young\u2019s brother, but he\u2019s not sure. So begins his artist statement for Parallel Lives, Misremembered Pasts, Revelation, Heartbreak & Lore, Perkins\u2019 exhibit currently at the Gallery at Library Square. Which seems rather flippant or careless for an artist statement. And yes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40044,"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":[916,1334],"class_list":["post-40038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-gallery-at-library-square","tag-ryan-perkins"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/perkins.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 09:35:15","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\/40038","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40038"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40063,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40038\/revisions\/40063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}