{"id":74062,"date":"2024-01-30T10:10:23","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T17:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=74062"},"modified":"2024-02-16T06:32:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T13:32:33","slug":"modern-wests-lake-effect-reveals-great-salt-lakes-peril-in-visual-narratives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/modern-wests-lake-effect-reveals-great-salt-lakes-peril-in-visual-narratives\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern West’s “Lake Effect” Reveals Great Salt Lake\u2019s Peril in Visual Narratives"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Al Denyer, “Into the Blue,” 2023, acrylic on canvas, 46 x 46 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tears are made of salt water. Grief is love. Whatever I have come to know as love and grief, I have learned from Great Salt Lake.<\/h4>\n

-Terry Tempest Williams<\/h4>\n

The fate of Great Salt Lake is hardly more than a footnote in the longer story of how immigrant (some would say white) developers, engineers, and politicians have dammed rivers and flooded much of America, even as they drained swamps and wetlands, in either case destroying the homes where uncounted millions of people and animals had lived for thousands of years. It seems as though wherever water was located, it was generally found to be in the wrong place. Most of those projects, of course, ultimately failed, and today dams are being dismantled even as efforts are made to save disappearing bodies of water, including the entire Great Salt Lake system.<\/h4>\n

The struggle to save Great Salt Lake goes forward amidst the worst climate crisis and drought in history. Many thoughtful individuals today question what the future holds, or even if there will be a future for us and our children. Those asking the question include a significant number of artists, who have to contend with the thought that even if humanity survives, civilization\u2014including the arts\u2014might not. In the face of such an existential threat, some artists have stripped down for a fight and prepared to do battle for life: their lives and the life of art. Take, for example, Modern West\u2019s exhibition, Lake Effect,<\/em> including Tom Judd\u2019s \u201cAvocet,\u201d a figure of a wading, shallow-water bird that in the past, like other birds that include the frequently seen seagull, has \u201cbet the nest,\u201d so to speak, on Great Salt Lake as a vital extension of its coastal range. There isn\u2019t space in this review for a lengthy discussion of the predicament of the lake, but Judd has encoded much in the succinct form of images, which he has further compressed by not wasting time or energy on surface polish, but allowing haste to convey his feeling of urgency.<\/h4>\n