{"id":88857,"date":"2024-12-05T09:16:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T16:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=88857"},"modified":"2024-12-17T14:10:46","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T21:10:46","slug":"what-we-will-miss-art-in-the-shadow-of-the-great-salt-lakes-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/what-we-will-miss-art-in-the-shadow-of-the-great-salt-lakes-decline\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Will Miss: Art in the Shadow of the Great Salt Lake’s Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Anne Albaugh, “The Great Salt Lake,” oil on canvas, 60×48 in.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s been half a century since artists began to see themselves as kin to the legendary canaries in the coal mine, those storied animals that gave the alarm when workplace environments deteriorated to the point where the workers\u2019 lives were endangered. Here in Utah, where there are many threats and injustices to call out, artists have recently focused on one of the more imminent: the demise of the Great Salt Lake, arguably the most significant symbol of the state\u2019s identity.<\/h4>\n

Many exhibitions in recent years have focused on our degraded environment. Yet artists mining these themes don\u2019t all agree. Some want to present the maximum beauty of what remains, while others focus on what may soon come to pass. As a result, a stunning sunset may share space next to a cluster of dead birds on a dry, cracked lakebed. Such contrasts can only undermine each others visions. How to take the purported threat seriously when surrounded by so much beauty? It\u2019s like pondering how there can be global warming and record-breaking wet weather at the same time.<\/h4>\n

Two artists, painter Anne Albaugh<\/a> and sculptor Jonna Ramey<\/a>, joined forces to seek a single perspective that may serve both to remind us all what is at stake, yet also express the fragility of what is, after all, the only life we know. The moment of realization they chose is embodied in their title: What We Will Miss<\/i>. The Lake effects everything in many ways: which of them is finally dispensable?<\/h4>\n
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Anne Albaugh, “The Hard Freeze”<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Anne Albaugh has a knack for capturing nature under harsh weather. \u201cThe Hard Freeze\u201d captures the sharp definition of mountains in full sunlight, revealing the battle going on between stone and the forces of erosion that are breaking it. On the square foot of \u201cThe Bottoms,\u201d contending forces are literally seen to be black and white, while windy brush strokes swirl about.<\/h4>\n

In \u201cThe Great Salt Lake,\u201d irony verges on sarcasm. A brown cloud drips something unhealthy onto a half-exposed lakebed. Another painting mockingly complains of \u201cToo Much Beach.\u201d The artist points out on a title card that every added inch of snow is worth $28 million to ski entrepreneurs, but as the lakebed dries and turns to dust, which blows onto that snow so that it absorbs sunlight, the ski season is shortened by premature melting. She might add that what snow there is owes its quality and quantity to the lake effect, which requires a lake.<\/h4>\n

Speaking of \u201cThe Lake Effect,\u201d a work by that name features a nighttime storm over the Lake, such as was stock-in-trade for Romantic painters and poets. It might show that all this has been part of the scene since long before the climate shift began. What it actually reveals is how natural forces have always been delicately balanced between creation and destruction, while it leaves room for the recognition that human activities are throwing that balance ever further off. What was once exaggerated for poetic effect is becoming everyday fact.<\/h4>\n