{"id":68526,"date":"2023-07-24T14:17:31","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T20:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=68526"},"modified":"2023-07-24T14:17:31","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T20:17:31","slug":"twenty-artsts-examine-our-common-predicament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/twenty-artsts-examine-our-common-predicament\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty Artists Examine Our Common Predicament in Phillips Gallery Show"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Liberty Blake, “Remnant Of Water,” collage on panel, 17 1\/2 x 18 1\/2 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Consider this familiar fact: we know that water arranges grains of sand more tightly together, so that when they dry, the sand has become solid, recalling the rock from which it was abraded. Pro sculptors, amateurs on holiday, and even children at play can carve the most remarkable things from it, but over stress it and it will crumble back into loose grains. This mirrors in brief the millions of years it took for ancient sands to become welded together into the almost indestructible Navajo Sandstone that helps make possible the cliffs and spires so emblematic of the West. For centuries of human passage, the desert\u2019s often-crunchy surface was mistaken for such casually hardened sand, but about fifty years ago, signs began appearing in places like Arches National Monument, now one of America\u2019s most popular National Parks, explaining that this was something altogether different. In fact, it\u2019s the body of a living organism, Desert Crust, that constitutes one of the largest and most endangered living organisms on Earth: one we injure by our oblivious footfalls and destroy with our industry. It is this crust that Liberty Blake identifies at the heart of her \u201cTide Pool\u201d series of collages.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

Water doesn\u2019t just rise and fall with the ocean\u2019s tides: it also moves vertically in soils, which is an essential factor in the lives of plants. The thin soil lining the rock pool Blake celebrates, which may lie dry and apparently lifeless for months or years, springs immediately to rich and complex life when a rare rainfall occurs. Such organisms, not unlike the salt-tolerant brine shrimp that drew Robert Smithson to build \u201cSpiral Jetty\u201d on the Great Salt Lake \u2014 seen here in three of Ron Brown\u2019s photographs \u2014 are adapted to live their life spans in hours or days, then leave their DNA to lie in the desiccated soil to await the next rain.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Jean Arnold, “Intrepid Potash 1,” acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Like every aspect of life on Earth, this ancient routine faces new challenges from humans who heedlessly walk through dry pools or wander off the trail into crusty soil. Even worse are the depredations of extractive industries. Those who have been to Dead Horse Point in recent years have no need of Jean Arnold\u2019s title and statement in order to recognize her \u201cIntrepid Potash Ponds,\u201d a livid blue scar in the timeless red rock excavation carved out by the Colorado River as it sought a way to a sea it no longer reaches. There are two challenges for the mind to grasp in the place she depicts. One is that each year a billion gallons of water, two thirds of the area\u2019s scarce supply, are consumed by this mining program. The other is the knowledge that this source of the mineral isn\u2019t presently needed, but was found irresistible by those who saw an opportunity for profit otherwise perceived as going to waste beneath the land that covered it.<\/h4>\n

Humanity makes scant appearance in Our Fragile Ecosystem<\/i>, which may reflect our hesitance to see ourselves implicated in it. Both Corinne Geertsen and Gini Pringle depict humans as clowns, though Pringle also lends a ghostly transparency to the woman in \u201cLooking for the Lake,\u201d a poignant reversal of the fate of a disappearing body of water. John Erickson\u2019s \u201cBike\u201d is meant to suggest a solution for some of what ails ecology, but the absence of a human agent may speak a greater, if ironic truth. \u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Paul Vincent Bernard, “Tremblings,” oil on aluminum<\/p><\/div>\n

Two contrasting themes primarily occupy Out Fragile Ecosystem. <\/i>One is rock, which forms the muscular landscapes that have traditionally gleaned artistic attention, though it may be more accurately and characteristically seen in Paul Vincent Bernard\u2019s penetrating views: \u201cTremblings\u201d and \u201cBeneath the Castle.\u201d Recognizing that these geological events, like waterfalls and other attractions, are ultimately temporary allows seeing them more as\u00a0 <\/span>backdrops for the sand they become, which is the most common mineral on the Earth\u2019s surface and which is captured in the gritty textures in Josanne Glass\u2019s \u201cEl Desierto\u201d and \u201cTormenta de Arena,\u201d where the land bakes beneath a red hot sun. The latter title performs some linguistic alchemy, suggesting for English speakers the spectacle of combat as spectator sport, a public test between men, while its actual meaning, \u201csandstorm,\u201d labels a far more commonplace challenge that confronts, and ought to unite, all the living things that constitute nature.<\/h4>\n

The other theme is the role of water, whether an abstraction, a visible presence, or an implicit, yet crucial partner in everything here. It plays its most integral role in Liberty Blake\u2019s \u201cRemnant of Water,\u201d in which her precious, sought-after, and carefully allocated scraps of scavenged paper \u2014 characteristics shared with water in the desert \u2014 convey the littoral zone between the pool\u2019s high-water mark and the dwindling traces that remain: recovery from the brink of oblivion and restoration into something precious, appropriate, and finally eloquent dramatically invoking the precise means by which life survives and reproduces itself in nature.<\/h4>\n
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Downy Doxey-Marshall, “Taffy Pool,” oil on canvas, 36 x 32 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Downy Doxey-Marshall\u2019s \u201cTaffy Pool\u201d exemplifies her long-standing foregrounding of open water as light\u2019s enabling presence, best seen in the wetlands where life flourishes in contrast to its sparse presence nearby. Connie Borup, whose landscapes have always conjured intimate views of living places, has moved water\u2019s edge to the center of works like \u201cLavender Openings\u201d and \u201cTangled Reflections.\u201d Like them, Tom Bettin’s works celebrate water by juxtaposing it with the plant life it makes possible. In a trio of innovative ceramic works she\u2019s transferred from pedestal to wall, Heidi Moller Somson acknowledges the fresh perspective of water seen from above: long done by birds in flight, now done from drones and artificial satellites.<\/h4>\n

Water is presumed in Randee Levine\u2019s not so much literal as literary presentations, while in Maureen O\u2019Hara Ure\u2019s whale\u2019s tale, \u201cTrue Story,\u201d water assumes a narrative role. Jim Frazer captures the delicate fragility of ecological complexity in one of its briefest, but most noted achievements, while Hunter Jackson\u2019s Icelandic photograph restores its primary mystery. Dan Toone\u2019s giant teardrop could certainly fall for Wendy Van De Kamp bees, which are already victims of an agricultural indifference her images make all the harder to understand. Viewer\u2019s might also struggle to imagine Kathy Minck\u2019s smoky \u201cBlocks of Sky\u201d above Tom Howard\u2019s \u201cSpring City Canyon.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Trent Alvey spontaneously evokes water in her monotype, \u201cTrinity,\u201d first by her fluid handling of the blue and yellow marks that structure it, then through the roiling and splashing abrasions that border and divide its dominant third color: black. Art today creates opportunities to make a variety of statements, and Alvey has used them all to reveal how she survived her radiation-pocked childhood in Sanpete County. Here she uses her statement\u2019s words to attack plans to reproduce the radioactive proliferation that long ago befell her, which is now being proposed for infliction on a new generation of innocents. This time, instead of weapons, it\u2019s in pursuit of another, even more dangerous, and still non-renewable source of energy: another water-guzzling technology being proposed for a land with not a drop to spare.<\/h4>\n
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Trent Alvey, “Trinity,” monotype, 24 x 18 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

The exhibition title, Our Fragile Ecosystem<\/i>, displays a limit of language: it might imply that what\u2019s under discussion belongs to us<\/i>, when in fact we belong to it. Perhaps the only way anyone can see anything so essential as the truth about our living planet is a technique analogous to what artists call \u201cContour Drawing,\u201d in which one fixates on the object to the complete exclusion of everything else, including the paper, the drawing instruments, and one\u2019s self \u2014 own\u2019s own hand \u2014 until the shape of the thing in question is visibly transferred to the page. What these twenty one artists have done, in works they\u2019ve selected to represent what may be our closest approach to the comprehension of our predicament, is to look that long and hard at the delicate means that brought life into the Southwest, in heartfelt hope that it can somehow go on.\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our Fragile Ecosystem<\/em>, Phillips Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through Aug. 11<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Consider this familiar fact: we know that water arranges grains of sand more tightly together, so that when they dry, the sand has become solid, recalling the rock from which it was abraded. Pro sculptors, amateurs on holiday, and even children at play can carve the most remarkable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":68527,"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":[226,169,1469,1103,289,157,2710],"class_list":["post-68526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-jean-arnold","tag-jim-frazer","tag-liberty-blake","tag-maureen-ohara-ure","tag-paul-vincent-bernard","tag-phillips-gallery","tag-randee-levine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/LIBL_remnant-of-water-tide-series-18.5x17.5.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 21:52:03","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\/68526","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=68526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68532,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68526\/revisions\/68532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}