{"id":89947,"date":"2025-01-28T09:38:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T16:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=89947"},"modified":"2025-03-17T15:01:03","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T22:01:03","slug":"eighteen-artists-come-together-to-celebrate-joy-memory-and-childhood-at-bdac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/eighteen-artists-come-together-to-celebrate-joy-memory-and-childhood-at-bdac\/","title":{"rendered":"Eighteen Artists Come Together to Celebrate Joy, Memory and Childhood at BDAC"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Installation view of Bountiful Davis Art Center’s “Joy Full” including \u00a0Emily Hawkins’ “Kids\u2019 One Minute Sculptures” and work by Katie Kortman (center and right) that appeared on Season 19 of Bravo\u2019s Project Runway. Image by Steve Coray.<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s a nifty bit of architectural symbolism going down at the Bountiful-Davis Art Center this month. Around the periphery of the building’s main space, three separate artists have set up works that address the ever-present dilemma of how a society feeds its members. What\u2019s in the middle, instead of the usual one, two, or maybe three artists whose self-expressive exhibitions happen to coincide, are 18 artists whose works were specifically chosen for Joy Full: A Display of Wonder and Delight.<\/i> Subtitled a \u201cCurated Exhibition\u201d to reflect how it was assembled, it\u2019s as if having considered the question of how we might first find sustenance, the next question is how we will live in a manner that offers sufficient positives to justify all our eating.<\/h4>\n
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Rosanna Lynne Welter, “Islands in the Stream”<\/p><\/div>\n

For the visitor, so many artists, and several works by each, add up to a lot to take in all in one visit. Neither can a writer hope to catalog all of them. It is possible, though, to start with a work that, more than any other, shares a private message with the viewer. Such a piece might be Rosanna Lynne Welter\u2019s quilted figure study, \u201cIslands in the Stream.\u201d The title, from a novel by Ernest Hemingway and a song by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, speaks of moments of happiness or tranquility amidst a turbulent life. The image, though, of the artist\u2019s legs stretched out before her in the bathtub, recalls one of the first self-portraits of Frida Kahlo to become known outside of Mexico. Kahlo\u2019s version shows her feet submerged halfway in the water, so her toes are reflected and doubled in the water, forming part of a signature surreal image. Welter\u2019s version uses trapunto, a padded form of quilting that lends an extra feeling of comfort and luxury that travels physically with the piece.<\/h4>\n

Welter has a sense of whimsy that is particularly evident in her \u201cChicken Impossible\u201d series: ten so far, she says, fiber images of chickens that came to her while watching ice skating during the Olympics and\u2014she swears\u2014someone knitting sweaters for their chickens. Her goal in these delightful scenes is to relieve anxiety, and it\u2019s hard to imagine a more useful role for art in 2025.<\/h4>\n

There\u2019s a remarkable community of artists and teachers on the Wasatch Front who often refer to historical or exotic scenes and places and frequently augment them with found objects. What\u2019s most impressive about them is how accomplished all their works are; they clearly excite and inspire each other to a high level of conception and polish in their craft. Highly visible among them is Jason Lanegan, whose position on the faculty at Utah Valley University brings him into contact with not only his colleagues up and down the Front, but with students who bring their own energy and imagination to the project. Lanegan has six works in Joy Full<\/i>, each of them a form of reliquary in which either the container or its contents could stand alone as a recapitulation of his formidable power of memory. He evokes domestic architecture, children\u2019s toys with and without wheels, quilts, personal adornment, formal storage, and ritual display, often drawing multiple associations from his assemblages. The most intriguing, minimalist addition to his oeuvre is a collection of labeled, scientific-style sample bottles in appropriate carrying cases, evidence from his travels of his conviction that anything found in a place can have the power to recall being there, even as holy relics bring the saints associated with them to mind as if they were present in person.<\/h4>\n
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Jason Lanegan’s “A Poor Man\u2019s View of Europe.” Image by Goeff Wichert.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Installation view of Bountiful Davis Art Center’s “Joy Full” with work Laura Erekson’s “\u201cAnd I Call Her Mother\u201d (left), John Connors’ \u201cBuild\/Break Blocks\u201d (foreground) and Rosemarie Dunn\u2019s \u201cNight Music” (top right). Image by Steve Coray.<\/p><\/div>\n

Essential to the success of Joy Full<\/i> is its evocation of family life and especially the experiences of children, which sometimes aim to recall childhood experiences for adults but at other times address the young viewer directly. In doing so, John Connors and Becca Foster Clason choose not to talk down to children, but allow them to appreciate the works\u2019 sophisticated content in accordance with their own capacities. The title of a garden large enough to remind adults what it feels like to be small is \u201cCuriouser and curiouser,\u201d which was Alice\u2019s comment in Wonderland when she experienced an unprecedented change in size. Then the alphabet blocks that can be used to spell \u201cbuild\u201d will always spell \u201cbreak\u201d on another side, a gentle introduction to the duality of creation and destruction as well as the truth that the rules we encounter in life preexist us and are inescapable.<\/h4>\n

From her early days, Emily Hawkins has collaborated with her own children in ways that let them discover whatever valuable lessons are in store. Her \u201cOne Minute Sculptures\u201d\u2014costumes they create for themselves from whatever they can find\u2014teaches them not to overvalue their creative options, an impulse that is sometimes called \u201cmasterpiece fever,\u201d and by not letting fear of failure stop them, to succeed in a way they might not have imagined. \u201cKids in Quarantine: Junk Sculptures\u201d teaches a similar lesson about keeping an open mind regarding a given material\u2019s initial suitability. Another artist who works with children, photographer Marissa Albrecht, uses their play as raw material that she transforms into colorful, abstract video programs.<\/h4>\n
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Installation by John Connors and Becca Foster Clason titled \u201cWe Write Our Future.” Image by Geoff Wichert.<\/p><\/div>\n

In a gracefully lucid explanation of why he calls his sculptures \u201creliquaries,\u201d Jason Lanegan, who might well have taught or otherwise influenced some of the other artists here, argues that everyday objects can connect with our memories and past feelings, while the evocative objects he makes to hold them set them apart for contemplation. Leslie Graff says, \u201cI frequently use repeated or cumulating elements or depict seemingly mundane activities emphasizing that much of the meaning and richness of life is actually found in small or ordinary things.\u201d These artists\u2019 feelings differ just enough from the curator\u2019s expression of her intentions to remind us that just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, art dwells in the hearts and minds of those who share it. Artist, curator, and viewer may not have the same ideas or feelings about them, but we have enough in common to form a community, a sympathetic, human family here that may be full of joy.<\/h4>\n

Joy Full: A Display of Wonder and Delight<\/em>, Bountiful Davis Art Center<\/a>, Bountiful, through March 28<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a nifty bit of architectural symbolism going down at the Bountiful-Davis Art Center this month. Around the periphery of the building’s main space, three separate artists have set up works that address the ever-present dilemma of how a society feeds its members. What\u2019s in the middle, instead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":89951,"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":[1153,4676,4145,1165,4675,4674,4147],"class_list":["post-89947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-bdac","tag-becca-foster-clason","tag-emily-hawkins","tag-jason-lanegan","tag-john-connors","tag-leslie-graff","tag-rosanna-lynne-welter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/John-Connors-and-Becca-Foster-Clason-We-Write-Our-Future-Installation-scaled.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-08 21:46:07","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\/89947","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=89947"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91357,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89947\/revisions\/91357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}