{"id":83845,"date":"2024-07-15T06:24:22","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T13:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=83845"},"modified":"2024-08-12T08:50:26","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T15:50:26","slug":"the-face-of-utah-sculpture-celebrates-twenty-years-of-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/the-face-of-utah-sculpture-celebrates-twenty-years-of-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Face of Utah Sculpture Celebrates Twenty Years of Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Art<\/a>

Installation view of The Face of Utah Sculpture XX at Utah Cultural Celebration Center<\/p><\/div>\n

Early in the new millennium, a couple of inauspicious things occurred locally. Shawn Rossiter, a linguist turned painter, decided to start something he felt Utah needed: an arts magazine. 15 Bytes struggled for a few years, then hit its stride in 2005. Same applies to glass master Dan Cummings, who\u2019d started what he\u2019d hoped would be an annual sculpture salon. The Face of Utah Sculpture only began to deliver when Cummings found the Utah Cultural Celebration Center, whereupon his vision of an annual survey of a protean medium took off. It\u2019s now been 20 years, and this anniversary edition sees many of the stalwarts back again, alongside some whose names are as unfamiliar as their materials and subjects are their own.<\/h4>\n
\"Colorful<\/a>

Pilar Pobil, “Las Campesinas,”<\/p><\/div>\n

Start with a name both old and new. Pilar Pobil epitomizes the artist as social as well as cultural influence, and in recognition of her contributions to the community, the main space at UCCC, nameless till now, has been christened the Pilar Pobil Celebration Gallery. True to form, Pobil’s work in the show, \u201cLas Campesinas,\u201d features a pair of folkloric women, peasants seated amidst their market-day vegetables. They recall that a large portion of Utah\u2019s population is Hispanic, including many leading artists, and that historic and biographical sources figure in any statewide accounting.<\/h4>\n

Other figure studies vary from traditional to unexpected. Mark Degraffenried\u2019s \u201cAscension\u201d reverses the trajectory of the Louvre\u2019s famous Nike of Samothrace, showing a woman floating heavenward, rather than descending on the victorious Greek fleet. Ed Fraughton\u2019s intriguing \u201cMystery of the Anasazi\u201d employs a powerful gesture to invoke a major prehistoric mystery. At the other end of the spectrum, Mikey Silva illustrates Katherine Dunn\u2019s sensational 1989 novel, \u201cGeek Love,\u201d with a satanic figure of a child whose deliberate deformity did not prevent assuming a role in a loving family. Then there\u2019s Hannah Olive\u2019s \u201cUntitled Tower Piece,\u201d which resembles a rehearsal for Romeo and Juliet\u2019s Balcony Scene, but turns out to be figures made of tape, arranged on a much-used kitchen stool.<\/h4>\n