{"id":55380,"date":"2020-12-17T09:32:05","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T15:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=55380"},"modified":"2020-12-28T09:35:19","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T15:35:19","slug":"still-here-emily-larsen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/still-here-emily-larsen\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Here: Emily Larsen"},"content":{"rendered":"

With our \u201cStill Here\u201d series, we are checking in with members of Utah\u2019s art community to see what the past several months have meant for them. Emily Larsen<\/a> is a Utah-based curator and collage artist. She currently works as the Head of Exhibitions and Programs at the Springville Museum of Art and is pursuing an M.A. in U.S. History at the University of Utah.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A socially-distanced Springville Museum of Art<\/p><\/div>\n

2020 was definitely a year of pivoting. In March, like many other cultural institutions, the Springville Museum of Art, where I work, closed their doors for several months, and postponed the annual \u201cSpring Salon\u201d for the first time since WWII. I was in the middle of a semester at the University of Utah, where I\u2019m working on a graduate degree and all of our classes shifted to Zoom. My husband, Eric Boothe, and I started watching the Sopranos.<\/p>\n

The day the earthquake happened we\u00a0 <\/span>could feel it all the way down in Utah County; we were still in bed and I remember saying, \u201cI think that was an earthquake,\u201d and Eric replying, \u201cI think it was just our bed swaying.\u201d He had already learned to lean into the strangeness of 2020 and just accept whatever was going to happen.<\/p>\n

Acceptance has been another theme of the year along with learning to pivot. It\u2019s taught me to always be ready to change plans, come up with a new solution, and be willing to let go of things that just aren\u2019t working \u2014 whether that\u2019s in my work at the museum, my artmaking, or my research.<\/p>\n

At the museum, we\u2019ve worked to transform our programs. We\u2019ve had Zoom opening receptions, virtual field trips, and a drive-thru Halloween activity. Our director, Rita Wright, even led a ghost tour through an empty museum. I\u2019ve been especially excited about our K-12 programming. One of our most successful projects was an online exhibition of\u00a0 <\/span>K-12 artwork responding to the pandemic. The students were asked to respond to how their lives have changed using the prompt \u201cUp Close and Far Away\u201d \u2014 what things had become closer and what had moved away in their new realities? Their artwork was thoughtful, poignant, and in some cases, heartbreaking. See it here<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>This fall, we\u2019ve worked to create digital outreach programs for teachers and students. I was especially excited about a training I developed for Social Studies teachers on how to incorporate visual arts in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As an artist, I\u2019ve been less successful. Between work and pandemic anxiety I have not been making as much art as usual. I have, however, doodled a lot more. Zoom inspires my habit of making blind contour drawings during meetings.\u00a0 <\/span>I have probably made more silly contour drawings this year than anything else; although I did make a few collages \u2014 including some business-card-sized works for the inaugural show at the J. Kirk Richards\u2019 Gallery. The size constraint was perfect for my limited attention span.<\/p>\n

I am continuing to work on my research and writing on Utah artists, especially in collaboration with Heather Belnap at BYU. Though, with archives closed or having limited hours, this too has slowed. But, I\u2019ve made some progress on a few different projects, one focusing on art education and Americanization in Progessive Era Utah schools and a larger project about how Utah women used art to navigate gender and power during the early twentieth century.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been inspired by all the artists, curators, critics, and writers I interact with online. I think a huge strength of the Utah art scene is our community. I\u2019ve desperately missed in-person openings, lectures, and gallery strolls. But, I\u2019ve been heartened by the resiliency and adaptation everyone has shown.\u00a0 <\/span>It encourages me that our creative community is still here and will still be here when this is all over, with new skills, ideas, and resources in our tool belts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With our \u201cStill Here\u201d series, we are checking in with members of Utah\u2019s art community to see what the past several months have meant for them. Emily Larsen is a Utah-based curator and collage artist. She currently works as the Head of Exhibitions and Programs at the Springville […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55384,"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":[3837],"tags":[3067],"class_list":["post-55380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-still-here","tag-emily-larsen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/Meeting-Doodle-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 10:56:51","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\/55380","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55388,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55380\/revisions\/55388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}