{"id":66660,"date":"2023-01-10T14:36:21","date_gmt":"2023-01-10T20:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=66660"},"modified":"2023-01-24T09:29:27","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T15:29:27","slug":"curation-as-creative-think-tank-hikmet-sidney-loes-the-center-can-not-hold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/curation-as-creative-think-tank-hikmet-sidney-loes-the-center-can-not-hold\/","title":{"rendered":"Curation as Creative Think Tank: Hikmet Sidney Loe’s “The Center Can Not Hold”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Detail from the inside of Anne Mooney and John Sparano’s “carto\u2022graphic, aerial 02 installation”<\/p><\/div>\n

Hikmet Sidney Loe<\/a> left in the summer of 2021. Left Utah, that is. Moved her residence 385 miles south to Nevada, where she now teaches in the art history department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Left Salt Lake City, where she had lived for decades, working as a librarian, adjunct art history professor, a writer, researcher and Land Art expert. Left, we say, because in moving that far south she crossed a political boundary, crossed a specific semantic framework dating back to the era of Manifest Destiny.<\/h4>\n

In a sense, though, she has remained: her range may have expanded but her pursuits are still rooted in the desert West. Remained, also, because those pursuits have also meant returns: to Salt Lake City last summer to teach at the University of Utah, and this fall to Ephraim to curate an exhibit at Granary Arts.<\/h4>\n

In September 2021, when Granary Arts\u2019 executive director Amy Jorgensen invited Loe to curate an exhibition centered on architects creating contemporary art related to the idea of place, Loe welcomed the concept: she was already familiar with architects who worked as artists and the idea of place \u2026 well that\u2019s her specialty. Instead of coming up with a specific theme to direct the participating artists, Loe decided to create a \u201ccollaborative think tank,\u201d as she describes it: curator and artists would meet twice a month to talk through their ideas for an exhibition and see what happens.<\/h4>\n

During this incubation period Loe was reading a Facebook post by artist Rebecca Salmon. \u201cI can\u2019t remember now what the post was about,\u201d she says, \u201dbut a line stuck out to me: \u2018The center cannot hold.\u2019\u201d Loe mentioned the reference at the group\u2019s next meeting, and Hannah Vaughn not only identified it as a line by Yeats, but began reciting the poem.<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Detail of “Near Distance,” by Hannah Vaughn, Reihaneh Noori and Soonju Kwon, 2020, Salt Lake City Airport<\/p><\/div>\n

A Salt Lake City architect and educator, Vaughn cofounded VY Architecture (Utah and Idaho) and teaches design at the University of Utah School of Architecture. Her interests in place and the manipulation of materials have resulted in various performances, sculptures and installations \u2014 you may remember her work from Finch Lane\u2019s \u201c9 Territories\u201d exhibit in 2015, or seen her recently created mural on your way out of security at the Salt Lake City airport. She was joined in Loe\u2019s \u201cthink tank\u201d by Anne Mooney and John Sparano of Sparano + Mooney Architecture. Like Vaughan, Mooney teaches at the U\u2019s Architecture department and both she and Sparano have been recognized for their outstanding design work in the Intermountain West.<\/h4>\n

Yeats’ line, Loe says, became the idea that drove the group\u2019s discussions. While Ephraim is at the geographic center of the state, the state of Utah is a relatively recent political construct, and Ephraim was not a geographic center for the Indigenous people of what we now call Utah. The group, according to Loe, asked: \u201cWhat does it mean to be the center? Ephraim is the center, but for whom?\u201d As the group\u2019s discussion coalesced around this theme, Loe suggested the exhibit should be a \u201csandbox\u201d for the architects\/artists to explore their own personal interpretations.<\/h4>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Installation view of Anne Mooney and John Sparano’s “carto\u2022graphic”<\/p><\/div>\n

As part of their architectural practice, Mooney and Sparano create sculptural objects. \u201cThey call them \u2018conceptual constructs,\u2019\u201d Loe explains. “They help them work through ideas with their teams towards realizing a project.\u201d For The Granary exhibit they have created one of these objects, a white structure which resembles a NASA return capsule, with various openings. Through these, a viewer is given an always partial vision of the inside, where a series of maps, based on the Jeffersonian grid system, have been layered with and obstructed by seeds, representing the original food stuffs of the Indigenous people.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Vaughn\u2019s work also deals with layers: \u201c\u2026 layers of time, layers of motion, layers of thought, layers of place,\u201d as Loe describes them. She works with different casts of wood and paper casts embedded with thin layers of organic matter and skeletal remains, revealing a concept of place as an expansion of time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are really professional, top-of-their-game, seasoned architects who can think conceptually and work artistically\u201d Loe says.\u00a0<\/span>The direction of the group\u2019s discussions was mostly intellectual, conceptual. Little was said of the actual objects themselves; which is why Loe was surprised and intrigued by the resulting aesthetic unity of the exhibit. \u201cThere’s a sense of whiteness, of the materials, which I think is fascinating within the whiteness of the gallery … To me there\u2019s a sort of solemn quality.\u201d These sort of observations are the sort of thing that will crop up in Loe’s thinking, germinate and sprout up in some future project.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/h4>\n

Loe is always juggling multiple projects. In addition to her teaching endeavors at UNLV, she has been traveling across the Intermountain West, visiting sites like the Sun Tunnels, Butte Montana’s Berkeley Pit and Michael Heizer’s Double Negative. She’s working on her new book project, “The Sun Tunnels Encyclo: Exploring Nancy Holt\u2019s Earthwork through Perception and Site.\u201d And with Katie Hoffman, president of Nevadans for Cultural Preservation, she’s curating an exhibit of contemporary artists engaging with Land Art in the Las Vegas area.<\/span><\/h4>\n

“A curator can be many things,\u201d Loe says, remarking that each time she curates or co-curates an exhibit at a different venue, her approach may change. \u201cIt\u2019s not a cookie-cutter idea, and what I have valued so much with the exhibit at Granary right now and working with Ann, John and Hannah is this openness to want to think through ideas, the openness to want to have this think tank.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Loe visited the Granary Arts exhibit in November, and is returning virtually this month to participate in a symposium on the exhibit with Mooney, Sparano, Vaughn, Aurora Tang and moderator Amy Jorgensen. The symposium will be held via Zoom Thursday at 6:30. (Please RSVP<\/a> on Eventbrite to attend. Zoom Meeting ID and Passcode will be emailed to you.)<\/h4>\n

The Center Can Not Hold<\/em>, Curated by Hikmet Sidney Loe, Granary Arts<\/a>, Ephraim, through Jan. 20<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hikmet Sidney Loe left in the summer of 2021. Left Utah, that is. Moved her residence 385 miles south to Nevada, where she now teaches in the art history department at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Left Salt Lake City, where she had lived for decades, working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66661,"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":[20,19,14],"tags":[4248,2274,86,4247,4246],"class_list":["post-66660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art_professional_spotlight","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-anna-mooney","tag-hannah-vaughn","tag-hikmet-sidney-loe","tag-john-sparano","tag-the-granary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/GranaryArtsTheCenterCannotHoldCuratedbyHikmetLoe.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 21:48:46","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\/66660","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=66660"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66671,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66660\/revisions\/66671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}