{"id":45131,"date":"2019-05-17T08:35:58","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T14:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=45131"},"modified":"2019-06-27T13:35:54","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T19:35:54","slug":"vomela-payan-and-downen-a-symphony-of-color-at-downtown-artist-collective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/vomela-payan-and-downen-a-symphony-of-color-at-downtown-artist-collective\/","title":{"rendered":"Vomela, Payan, and Downen: A Symphony of Color at Downtown Artist Collective"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Celine Downen’s “Meditations in Blue”<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cUse of color\u201d is an expression over-abundantly used, often because someone doesn\u2019t know what to say about art, or artists: as an artist, you are congratulated on \u201cyour use of color\u201d when, of course, you usually have no choice. Color\u2019s there, it happens; you might have chosen the tubes of paint closest to you as you painted; there\u2019s yet to be invented a colorless paint.<\/h4>\n

If using black and white, you might be congratulated on your use of light and dark, or shadows. A bit like being congratulated, when you\u2019re dressed, for your \u201cuse of clothes.\u201d It\u2019s all requisite.<\/h4>\n

But here, the three artists in\u00a0kr\u014dm\u0259<\/em>\u00a0(the phonetic spelling for “chroma,”\u00a0meaning: \u201can intensity or purity of color\u201d) \u2014 whom the gallery statement says are together because of their use of color \u2014 are playing color as if, well, musicians.<\/h4>\n

What if the works of Celine Downen, Micah Payan, and Miroslava Vomela, now lining the Downtown Artist Collective (a serene and brilliant rectangle of old brick walls and blonde-\ufb01nished wood \ufb02oors) \u2014 were not the colors they are?<\/h4>\n

Celine Downen\u2019s cyanotypes would not be blue, the blue this photographic process creates, a medium marine blue very starkly silhouetting leaves, roots, plants, pure solid blues and whites these things never are. Arranged on one wall just above some handsome, brown-leather sling chairs, they are like blue and white lines of china: really, really blue and white. What if we could see ourselves in silhouette this way? We might rethink ourselves in blue and in this photographic process, if we saw our own silhouettes, or a whole movie transpiring in this marine blue and brilliant, brilliant white, spurring meditation about motives, motion, and simpler miracles.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cAre you hallucinating part 6″ by Micah Payan, with Celine Downen’s “Meditations in Blue” reflected in the background<\/p><\/div>\n

Micah Payan\u2019s photographs would lose their underwater pull: in \u201cAre you hallucinating part 6,” a woman sips on a straw on a bed in a sea of rich green which protects and enfolds and makes the moment of the photograph forever. She\u2019s in an intense green world, as if undersea; she\u2019s safe and strange and sealed away here by the color. You want to know how Payan made these photographs so rich in hue; but, yet, you don\u2019t. You want to believe they are as they are, and only Payan has camera-entry into this waterlocked world.<\/h4>\n

And Miroslava Vomela\u2019s artwork world of seaside greens and blues and corals and pinks \u2014 this deliberately soothing palette \u2014 could come terribly undone. Though Vomela is from the Czech Republic, a landlocked place, and she lives in Utah, another landlocked place, these pieces have a gentle sense of enclosure, containment, their frames looking a bit worn by salt or sun, most colors gently marine, greens and blues and aquas. Plump little roses appearing in them are a rockrose seaside pink; these, especially, are like a shy young girl\u2019s wishful colors, the colors of someone trying to soothe one\u2019s self, like aromas of lavender or camomile or pink carnations.<\/h4>\n

In a display on the wall are many of Vomela\u2019s small beloved objects: tiny empty glass bottles, miniature jars of old brass buttons, a plump but small curling seashell. There\u2019s a little bit of Glass Menagerie <\/em>going on here: then to the right of this delicate, careful display, there is a large black-and-white image, likely a passport photo of the artist. The gaze in \u201c(Self) Portrait of an Immigrant\u201d is best described as lost: there\u2019s terrible worry in it, shock, a bit of hopelessness, as if something is vanishing in front of a trans\ufb01xed person\u2019s eyes; it all can\u2019t be stopped. Then you see, around this dim black-and-white photo \u2014 a photo once small but now enlarged \u2014 very declaratory and de\ufb01ning words: They begin with REFUGEE; then they thunder on in black ink to descriptions of emotion\/personality (INTROVERT), profession, family (WIFE\/MOTHER), sport participation (SKIER), all the facets of a brave and rooted life here in the United States; and the artist, below these boldly written declarations, has added, like an overspilling and joyous European windowbox planter beneath her photo, drawings of spilling leaves and rosy \ufb02owers. (There is a truth about a window box of \ufb02owers: no one ever had<\/em> to plant one; they were always only planted for the thrill and joy of color, beauty.)<\/h4>\n

So don\u2019t think too-critical thoughts about any \u201cuse of color\u201d statement here. Here, against the old brick walls of the Downtown Artist Collective, once the Cosmic Aeroplane, color is deliberately protecting the three self-contained worlds of artistic work; and color has made, from a sad black-and-white photograph, a window box declaration of joy.<\/h4>\n
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\u201c(Self) Portrait of an Immigrant\u201d by\u00a0Miroslava Vomela<\/p><\/div>\n

kr\u014dm\u0259<\/em>, works by Celine Downen, Micah Payen, Miroslava Vomela, Downtown Artist Collective<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through June 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cUse of color\u201d is an expression over-abundantly used, often because someone doesn\u2019t know what to say about art, or artists: as an artist, you are congratulated on \u201cyour use of color\u201d when, of course, you usually have no choice. Color\u2019s there, it happens; you might have chosen the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1568,"featured_media":45133,"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":[2926,3460,3461,3462],"class_list":["post-45131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-celine-downen","tag-downtown-artist-collective","tag-micah-payen","tag-miroslava-vomela"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/refugee.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-05 17:18:25","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\/45131","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\/1568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45135,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45131\/revisions\/45135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}