{"id":67958,"date":"2023-05-20T08:53:56","date_gmt":"2023-05-20T14:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=67958"},"modified":"2023-05-30T08:44:18","modified_gmt":"2023-05-30T14:44:18","slug":"reeling-from-the-past-leaning-into-the-future-bdacs-statewide-annual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/reeling-from-the-past-leaning-into-the-future-bdacs-statewide-annual\/","title":{"rendered":"Reeling from the Past, Leaning into the Future: BDAC’s Statewide Annual"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kylie Millward, \u201cDomestic Remiss,” from the BDAC Statewide Annual. Image credit: Geoff Wichert<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cDomestic Remiss\u201d is the title of a work by Kylie Millward that appeared in Space Maker<\/em>, a 2021, pandemic-inspired exhibit at UMFA that, as 15 Bytes reported at the time<\/a>, was drawn \u201cfrom work by faculty within the University of Utah\u2019s Department of Art and Art History to showcase compellingly the ways in which artists have navigated their own art making during this once-in-a-century crisis.\u201d The pandemic panic may be over, but the relevance of Millward\u2019s take on domestic servitude remains as biting and truthful as ever. Thankfully, Emily Larsen, curator of the Bountiful Davis Art Center\u2019s 48th Annual Statewide Competition, agrees we could all use another look. The 24 images of \u201cDomestic Remiss” tell an initially neutral story of household labor that in subtle stages breaks down \u2014 the first definite sign that all is not well being the chef\u2019s whisk planted among the garden flowers in frame six \u2014 and culminates eighteen frames later with the presumed housewife, suitcases in hand, departing a house that is not only on fire, but sinking into a small lake flowing from faucets she\u2019s left open.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

So natural, so easy to read, are Millward\u2019s artworks that the casual viewer might overlook her choice of format: technically, they\u2019re comics, though part of the good news abroad these days is how many of her peers also choose this universal visual language. Her other contribution here takes this a step further by animating its image, of a vase of flowers being spilled on the floor. Yet despite being comics and cartoons, these are sophisticated works. The vase from which the flowers fall in \u201cMenstruation Rhythm\u201d may be the first time anyone has called attention to the resemblance between the two-handled victory quaff, a vessel often symbolic of two-fisted masculinity, and the most essential, and so of course most female, parts of human anatomy. In addition, the artist loops the scene so it repeats incessantly, capturing the exhausting inexhaustibility of what is often styled \u201cthe curse\u201d and, perhaps, expressing some frustration at one of nature\u2019s more extravagant and profligate strategies. Millward\u2019s appearance here also coincides with her selection for one of Utah Arts five Design Arts Fellowships for 2023<\/a>.<\/h4>\n
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Installation view of BDAC Statewide Annual, May, 2022. Image credit: Geoff Wichert<\/p><\/div>\n

For 176 years, Utah society has resonated with the theme of \u201carrival.\u201d Whether escaping the poverty of Liverpool slums or the anomie of modern life anywhere, people came here and continue to do so expecting a kind of Utopia. Perfection, of course, means things not only need not change, but cannot. And unfortunately, humans\u2014and especially the creative and artistic among them\u2014don\u2019t deal well with things they aren\u2019t allowed to change, to tinker with, and even outright replace. So it should come as little surprise that a collection of 88 works of art from across the State of Utah shows the result of a gradual and long-standing shift from an emphasis on arrival to thoughts of, for want of a more inclusive term, \u201cdeparture.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Andrey Sledkov, “Moroni.” Image credit: Geoff Wichert<\/p><\/div>\n

Even the most conventional-seeming works here show signs of it. Take Andrey Sledkov\u2019s bronze figure of \u201cMoroni.\u201d At the moment when the iconic angel has begun to disappear from some temples, Sledkov has chosen to augment the familiar realistic image with a more rugged, almost expressionist version. His Moroni is less etherial, less unworldly, and more like the ambitious, hard-workers who followed him here. Meanwhile, Carlie de Jesus relocates the popular, if often controversial \u201cJoy Ride\u201d to a jungle setting, with an ox, a rubber-tired wagon, and a suggestion not so much of pleasure, but of the child labor that poverty too often imposes.<\/h4>\n

While a show like BYU\u2019s Maynard Dixon retrospective, Searching for a Home<\/em><\/a>, will not soon lose its nostalgic appeal, there are signs of change here in how artists view the landscape. “Die W\u00fcste Lebt,\u201d which in German means \u201cThe Desert Lives,\u201d gives us G\u00fcnther Johannes Haidenthaller vision of the desert, not as empty, Wagnerian stage set for a purely human drama, but a lively environment in its own right. In \u201cBorn to Be Wild,\u201d on the other hand, Valerie Hollstein is content to see the redrock country as a backdrop for a less sanctimonious, more playful drama, which she represents with a figure collaged from rainbow shards of colored glass. Even Trish Melander\u2019s \u201cCapitol Reef,\u201d in which a path leads among trees and fallen rocks, presents a deliberately more approachable landscape.<\/h4>\n

And then there\u2019s the family, another of Utah\u2019s great themes. Kevin Madden\u2019s \u201cPortrait of a Mother\u201d could have been titled \u201cBlack Madonna\u201d \u2013 if, that is, he\u2019d wanted to look back to a time when race was taken for granted, instead of ahead to a time when it\u2019s not thought of at all. Sarah Maynard\u2019s \u201cA Mother on the Phone,\u201d on the other hand, asks that this vignette, in which a woman, as she often must, handles two tasks at once, be seen as simply stating the facts \u2014 nothing more, nothing less \u2014 including the universal curiosity and caution of children.<\/h4>\n

This may well be a case of the artists running a few steps ahead of their audience, but it\u2019s not unreasonable to expect that they\u2019re not alone in having reached the point where cultural assurances that life is unfolding as it should are no longer convincing. It\u2019s human nature that some who have found a place will choose to stay there, but it\u2019s also natural to want to go beyond. That penchant is what Clinton Whiting has captured in \u201cForesee,\u201d wherein a pair of figures lean into the future, already anticipating what is to come. And more often than we might think, that\u2019s what our arguably best artists do.<\/h4>\n
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Clinton Whiting, “Foresee”<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

48th Annual Statewide Exhibition<\/em>, Bountiful Davis Art Center<\/a>, Bountiful, through July 31<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDomestic Remiss\u201d is the title of a work by Kylie Millward that appeared in Space Maker, a 2021, pandemic-inspired exhibit at UMFA that, as 15 Bytes reported at the time, was drawn \u201cfrom work by faculty within the University of Utah\u2019s Department of Art and Art History to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":67968,"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":[4289,1153,3136,3672,2084],"class_list":["post-67958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-andrey-sledkov","tag-bdac","tag-clinton-whiting","tag-kylie-millward","tag-valerie-hollstein"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/IMG_4843-scaled.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 06:20:52","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\/67958","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\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67972,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67958\/revisions\/67972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}