{"id":96564,"date":"2025-10-02T10:23:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T17:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=96564"},"modified":"2025-10-02T11:38:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:38:05","slug":"reach-out-and-touch-grass-at-erosion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/reach-out-and-touch-grass-at-erosion\/","title":{"rendered":"Reach Out and Touch Grass at Erosion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Andrew

Andrew Rice prepares the walls of his studio-turned-gallery space at Poor Yorick Studios, sanding and patching in preparation for the next exhibition at Erosion Gallery.<\/p><\/div>\n

For most artists at Poor Yorick Studios, the semi-annual open studio event (see here<\/a>) may be the only time they put their space in order\u2014some tidying, sweeping, patching, maybe a coat of paint. But just days after welcoming the September crowds, Andrew Rice<\/a> is once again cleaning up. Gone are the delicate, filigreed collages\u2014small works built from comic book fragments and pop-cultural residue\u2014that he exhibited most recently at Finch Lane Gallery and then at Poor Yorick. He\u2019s sanding, patching, prepping. But the next show belongs to Holly Rios<\/a>.<\/h4>\n

Rice is a Utah-based artist, printmaker and educator whose work has long explored the psychological and spatial tensions between interior and exterior worlds. Over the past decade, he has shifted from large, existential drawings of uninhabited rooms\u2014vast blackened spaces that seemed to swallow the viewer\u2014to precise collages loaded with fragments of memory and meaning. \u2028During that time, he has turned his attention to building spaces rather than just picturing them. In 2019, with fellow artists Henry Becker and Nolan Flynn, he co-founded The Open Room<\/a>\u2014a backyard gallery and conversation series that sought to bridge what they saw as a growing divide between artists and audiences. Each event paired an exhibition with shared food, drink and critical dialogue. \u201cThe openings functioned a bit different from the typical art show format,\u201d the organizers said at the time. \u201cInstead of people filtering through, it was a small, committed group, all part of a conversation.\u201d The project\u2019s last hurrah was at UMOCA in July 2020, just as the pandemic forced many artists to rethink how\u2014and where\u2014art could be shown. \u201cIt was the end of the world,\u201d Rice recalls, \u201cso it seemed like a natural end to the experiment.\u201d<\/h4>\n

But Rice\u2019s impulse to create spaces didn\u2019t end there. After scaling down his own studio work and dismantling large pieces, he was left with a pile of scrap lumber. \u201cI stopped working large scale, and I had all this leftover wood, so I decided to build storage in my studio,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I did that, it created this little nook\u2014almost accidentally\u2014a defacto exhibition space. I put up some drywall, painted it white, and when I saw it all together on the wall, it made sense.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"A

View of Andrew Rice\u2019s studio at Poor Yorick Studios, showing the compact Erosion Gallery space nestled beside storage shelves and work tables.<\/p><\/div>\n

The first show at Erosion Gallery<\/a>, Adam Montoya’s layered photographic prints, monument:resident:alien, <\/em>went up quietly in 2021. Since then, Erosion Gallery has hosted eight exhibitions, each one intimate, low-stakes and rooted in conversation. \u201cIt\u2019s designed for experimental work,\u201d Rice says. \u201cSomething you might not be ready to show in a formal gallery. Maybe it\u2019s new, maybe it\u2019s not finished.\u201d<\/h4>\n

The events are small\u2014often just the artist and a circle of friends\u2014but the talk runs deep. \u201cWhen you keep going with the same group of people, the dialogue grows beyond a surface level. It\u2019s an ongoing conversation.\u201d (That being said, Rice stresses that everyone is invited to join that conversation).<\/h4>\n

That spirit made Erosion Gallery a perfect fit for artist and printmaker Holly Rios, who has been itching to curate more work. Like Rice, Rios studied printmaking at the University of Utah. Her work explores domesticity, gender construction and media literacy. For this exhibition, Touch Grass<\/em>, she has gathered a group of artists whose practices reconnect art-making with place. \u201cMotivated by the overwhelming influx of AI-generated art, the depletion of environmental resources, and political attacks on public land,\u201d Rios explains, \u201cTouch Grass highlights artists who continue to work in traditional media and celebrate their love of our public lands.\u201d<\/h4>\n
\"Open

A detail from Nathanael Read\u2019s altered book, part of Touch Grass at Erosion Gallery, combining ink drawings of Utah\u2019s Wasatch Mountains and urban skyline with layered maps and found pages.<\/p><\/div>\n

The exhibition brings together artists exploring different dimensions of the contemporary West: Matt Jones and Nathanael Read probe the myths and ideologies that shape regional identity; Cy Whitling, a comic artist and illustrator, reflects on outdoor recreation and its visual subcultures; Brooklyn Johnson and Tara Aguirre transform memory and personal experience into tactile records of time spent outdoors.<\/h4>\n

\u201cOn the surface,\u201d Rios says, \u201cthe work seems kind of fun and outdoor-rec subculture-y. But there\u2019s a lot of heaviness (political, religious, experiential) couched in the work. Some of it is more foregrounded, like in Cy\u2019s or Nathanael\u2019s work, but the others have that heaviness buried in it in quiet ways.\u201d<\/h4>\n

In a space barely large enough to fit a handful of people, these layered works feel close, personal. Visitors stand shoulder-to-shoulder, tracing lines, reading text, trading thoughts. That intimacy is the point. \u201cIt\u2019s small,\u201d Rios says, \u201cbut I really just want to feel some community right now. This curation felt like a way to invite that.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Rice seems to agree. Whether in his early drawings of empty rooms or his recent collages of fragmented media, his art has always probed the boundaries between connection and separation. With The Open Room and now Erosion Gallery, he has turned those inquiries outward, into real rooms, real communities. In a time when cultural spaces can sometimes feel vast, digital and depersonalized, Rice\u2019s \u201ctiny white cube\u201d suggests art need not be monumental to be meaningful. Sometimes, a few square feet and a few good conversations are enough.<\/h4>\n
\"Andrew

Andrew Rice and curator Holly Rios stand in Erosion Gallery at Poor Yorick Studios as they hang works for Rios’ exhibit Touch Grass, including prints, drawings, and sculptural pieces.<\/p><\/div>\n

Touch Grass<\/em>, Erosion Gallery<\/a>, South Salt Lake, October 3, 6-9 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For most artists at Poor Yorick Studios, the semi-annual open studio event (see here) may be the only time they put their space in order\u2014some tidying, sweeping, patching, maybe a coat of paint. But just days after welcoming the September crowds, Andrew Rice is once again cleaning up. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96576,"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":[19,18,14],"tags":[4741,4540],"class_list":["post-96564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-gallery_spotlights","category-visual_arts","tag-erosion-gallery","tag-holly-rios"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_1554-3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-03 15:19:33","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\/96564","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96564"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96579,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96564\/revisions\/96579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}