{"id":92599,"date":"2025-04-28T07:54:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T14:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=92599"},"modified":"2025-05-11T21:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T04:07:10","slug":"dreamscapes-and-parables-trevor-dahls-playful-visions-take-root-across-salt-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/dreamscapes-and-parables-trevor-dahls-playful-visions-take-root-across-salt-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Dreamscapes and Parables: Trevor Dahl\u2019s Playful Visions Take Root Across Salt Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Trevor Dahl at work on his Road Home mural, April 2025. Image by Steve Coray.<\/p><\/div>\n

Spring is emerging. Critters are out, both in the soil and on the canvas. There\u2019s no one better than Salt Lake City painter Trevor Dahl<\/a> to manifest the good happy stuff of this season of re-emerging life and blooming. Whether it\u2019s on canvas, stretched linen or the side of a UTA Trax stop, Dahl transforms life\u2019s creepy crawlers into happy friends palatable for families and children, or the intellectual dream philosopher.\u00a0Dahl has been busy, to say the least. A spring chicken, if you will, chasing project after project.<\/h4>\n

In March, he unveiled wraps designed for UTA Trax stops at the new Bees stadium in Daybreak. It’s a project titled \u201cPast, Present, & Future of South Jordan,\u201d illustrating the duality and dynamism that is the Salt Lake valley\u2014the beauty of horses running in pastures, the sun setting over the high desert, purple mountains, the Jordan River running below; bison that still roam and the persistent agriculture still active among increasing urbanization. He doesn’t shy away from the lived realities of the industrialized extractive practices that equally exist and thrive here: black smoke rises from the trains chugging out of mountainside mines, refinery smokestacks billow into our airshed, construction trucks claw away at the land. It\u2019s a tender yet unabashed ode to the quirks of this place.<\/h4>\n

In early April, he was one of eight artists to design a water droplet installation along North Temple in the heart of downtown for the Hidden Waters project. The brainchild of The Blocks and Seven Canyons Trust, the project aims to bring awareness to the different water sources that have been buried under our incessant urbanization. In his first sculpture to date, Dahl\u2019s water droplet has the third-eye chakra seen in many of his oil paintings, representing the inherent intelligence of water and the consciousness of nature, \u201csomething so easily forgotten or taken for granted in our urban landscapes,\u201d Dahl writes. He hopes to bring attention to the importance of conserving water and the hidden creek below our noses in this concrete jungle\u2014an example of how art and social action can harness the power in each.<\/h4>\n
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Trevor Dahl’s vinyl wrap “Past, Present, & Future” at the Daybreak TRAX station. Image courtesy of the artist.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Trevor Dahl’s eyedrop for the Hidden Waters project was unveiled in April, 2025. Image by Steve Coray.<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"Framed

“Martian,” from Trevor Dahl’s exhibit at Sprague Library in Salt Lake City.<\/p><\/div>\n

Dahl had a solo show \u00a0at the Sprague Branch branch of the Salt Lake City Library, which closed on April 24. Titled Archetypes<\/em>, it showed a mixture of mediums newer to Dahl\u2019s repertoire. The larger oil pastels on paper are interspersed with smaller, wood panel acrylic paintings centering his staple characters. The oil pastels are another textural journey in the plein air realm he has opened up in his practice, while the wood panel pieces offer a new canvas to his familiar creature friends. \u201cFrozen Stream\u201d catches the cold, wintery shadows with baby blues behind the snow piles. \u201cStansbury Island\u201d catches the golden mid-summer dry brush on the shores of the Great Salt Lake with the iridescence of the water at sunset. \u201cMr. Moon,\u201d and \u201cThe Sun\u201d bring some new characters, looking at the duality of night and day, light and dark, cold and warm. The two are placed perfectly amongst the warm golds of \u201cStansbury Island\u201d and the dark cold blues of \u201cFrozen Stream.\u201d Dahl turns the panels from utilitarian to fine art by adding painted frames unique to each: \u201cMartian\u201d has a bike chain\u2013like frame evoking its UFO and mechanical qualities; \u201cSpirit Bird\u201d has one with ruffles resembling the bird’s feathers. It was a small show, but loaded with signature Dahl-isms taking new forms.<\/h4>\n

Also in April Dahl, opened a solo show titled Good Friday<\/em> at Red Flower Studios’ Salt Lake location. Open until May 11 in the front showroom of the glassblowing studio on the city\u2019s downtown west side, the exhibit includes old work like \u201cA Prayer to Beauty Itself,\u201d a piece I saw years ago, before\u2014 full disclosure\u2014becoming personal friends with Trevor. I took a picture of the dancing hibiscus flower for its elegance and its viability as a tattoo, which I would paste on my body forever. But there are plenty of newer pieces, which range in size from small accessible plein-air works to huge dreamscapes riddled with parables and lessons and contemplations baked into each composition.<\/h4>\n

\u201cWhom Does the Grail Serve?\u201d is a scene of the medieval crossed with the biblical and spiced with a fantasy world of dragons and kings and desert roamers and astronaut beach loungers. It doesn\u2019t feel like we could ever possibly know the full meaning of each character in their micro scenes building out a larger parable on the canvas. But it certainly evokes thought, contemplation, slowing down to see all of the moving parts that build out this dream-scaped world of Dahl\u2019s internal sphere\u2014to see where we can each find ourselves in the scene.<\/h4>\n
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Installation view of Trevor Dahl’s exhibit “Good Friday” at Red Flower Studios in Salt Lake City. Image by Steve Coray.<\/p><\/div>\n