A Greater Utah Surveys the Artistic Output of an Entire State
While many of the figures in UMOCA’s A Greater Utah are familiar, the ambitious scope of the project allows for new perspectives outside of the state’s metropolitan center.
While many of the figures in UMOCA’s A Greater Utah are familiar, the ambitious scope of the project allows for new perspectives outside of the state’s metropolitan center. By Scotti Hill
Jared Steffensen, a Salt Lake City-based artist and curator, repurposes broken skateboard decks into enigmatic, nearly inexplicable sculptural artworks in the Current Work exhibition Nosey Taily and the Leftover Review. By Steve Jansen
Torrey House Press, an Intermountain West nonprofit environmental book publisher founded in 2010, renews its commitment to Western voices with a new focus on diverse perspectives. By Camille LeFevre
Kimball Art Center completes the year-long exhibition project Between Life and Land with the closing chapter entitled Crisis. By Heather Hopkins
Hole N” The Rock—a 1930s excavated cave that honors Jesus Christ and Franklin Delano Roosevelt—is a feat of do-it-yourself architecture just off Highway 191 near Moab, Utah. By Emily Arntsen
FeatureUtahVol. 8 Medium + Support
Building Man, an annual, week-long desert rave and art festival in Green River, Utah, celebrates artists who work with found and reclaimed materials. By Emily Arntsen
Studio VisitUtahVol. 8 Medium + Support
Salt Lake City–based artist Lenka Konopasek disrupts and decenters anthropocentrism with her three-dimensional paper sculptures, whose prickly paper strips instill aversion and attraction, as if growing out of the wall. By Alexander Ortega
Although the thematic connection feels strained, the pairing of works by Kheng Lim and Colour Maisch creates a visually rich and compelling exhibition that invites us to relish process and material. By Scotti Hill
Experience works exploring the juxtaposition between trees and the well-known red rocks of southern Utah landscapes in Reaching for the Sky, on view through September 23 in Cedar City. By Southern Utah Museum of Art
Rafael Fajardo’s 8-bit video game diptych YOU MADE OUR REALITY INTO A GAME?!?! engages border issues by humanizing migrant characters with Rasquachismo, kawaii, and comic sensibilities. By Alexander Ortega
Ogden Contemporary Arts presents two exhibitions delving into the profound theme of artwork as a cathartic release of trauma. Holly Wong: Emergence and Stephanie Leitch: Spellbound are on view through October 16, 2023. By Ogden Contemporary Arts
Alexis Rausch continues raising questions about mass responses to traumatic events and how her identity comes into play through the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition Nobody likes it here. By Bianca Velasquez
A Dream Deferred at Southern Utah Museum of Art explores the Black experience and inequality in education, wealth, and housing. The exhibition is on view through September 23, 2023. By Southern Utah Museum of Art
A Greater Utah, a major survey at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, aims to be more representative of regional artmaking than the predecessor show, Utah Biennial: Mondo Utah. By Gabriella Angeleti
Ogden Contemporary Arts’s second artist in residence Eric J. García invites us to scrutinize the principles upon which American history and identity are based in a dazzling and multifaceted artistic project. By Scotti Hill
Jessica Kinsey heads a small but growing team at the Southern Utah Museum of Art, a Cedar City institution that aims to replace culturally insular stereotypes with a community focus. By Scotti Hill
David Brothers of SLC evokes dark, dingy worlds through the derelict sets he builds. Photos from his latest project, Peed Upon, offer a dire caricature of our current times. By Alexander Ortega
Moab Arts Reuse Residency program in Utah, which attracts worldwide artists to make pieces out of rubbish, challenges the concept of detritus and trash. By Emily Arntsen
Utah Valley University is set to open a new museum inside of an old manor. The debut super exhibition, The Art of Belonging, centers BIPOC voices with connections to Utah. By Alexander Ortega
Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea explores the erasure of Black, LGBTQ+, Indigenous American, Asian American and Latinx culture through contemporary art. By Bianca Velasquez
New Mexico-based artist Eric García presents solo exhibition Aim High at Ogden Contemporary Arts and unveils a community mural, the culmination of a two-month residency at OCA. By Ogden Contemporary Arts
Matthew Sketch’s FAM(ily) exhibition at UMOCA comprises a series of untitled mixed-media pieces that explore the relationship between light and land. By Parker Scott Mortensen
As Utah faces the evaporation of the Great Salt Lake, Utah artists are finding ways to orient themselves in disaster by considering the relationship between disability and environment. By Parker Scott Mortensen
Jiyoun Lee-Lodge of Salt Lake City grapples with themes of isolation and belonging—in comic book-style works influenced by Korean folk art—in her ongoing Waterman series. By Scotti Hill
Mesmerizing Flesh, Tamara Kostianovsky’s exhibition of textile sculptures, encapsulates a compelling, if harrowing contradiction between industrial violence and the beauty of corporeal and organic forms. By Scotti Hill
The Horacio Rodriguez-curated exhibition and auction Boombox Benefit at UMOCA, a multi-artist showcase of ten ceramic pieces patterned from Rodriguez’s 1980s childhood boombox, aids ten different social justice-centric organizations. By Bianca Velasquez
FeatureUtahVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
The depletion of Utah’s Great Salt Lake is a symbol of the state’s worsening water crisis and has, throughout the past few years, inspired a diverse array of artistic responses. By Scotti Hill
ReviewUtahVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
Between Life and Land: Material at Kimball Art Center stuns not by virtue of its star artists, but from those that highlight the wonder and horror of our natural world. By Scotti Hill
ArtistsUtahVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
Salt Lake City-based Douglas Tolman's project Where Are you? interrogates map-making and deepens community connections to place. By Denise "The Vamp DeVille" Zubizarreta
Ogden Contemporary Arts presents Mesmerizing Flesh, a solo exhibition of work by globally recognized textile artist Tamara Kostianovsky. By Ogden Contemporary Arts
During the Utah state and Salt Lake City flag competitions, residents fall in love with Grant Miller’s dark-horse design heavy on clowning state symbols and imagery. By Scotti Hill
Wren Ross, a Park City, Utah, painter and social worker, plumbs our collective unconscious with stirring, uncanny work, where movement becomes a crucible for visual creation. By Alexander Ortega
Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City examines the perspectives of dozens of artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of the American West. By Utah Museum of Fine Arts
Salt Lake City’s Christian School, the brainchild of late artist Ralphael Plescia, is in limbo as an arts organization’s preservation efforts are hampered by the recent sale of the property. By Scotti Hill
Springville Museum of Art, newly helmed by Emily Larsen, is one of Utah’s oldest visual arts institutions—and a crucial component of the state’s arts education networks. By Steve Jansen
María del Mar González-González, a Utah-based curator, bolsters artist voices that are too often relegated to the fringes of discussions about Latinx art. By Alexander Ortega
The Center Can Not Hold—curated by Hikmet Sidney Loe and featuring works by Anne Mooney, John Sparano, and Hannah Vaughn—explores the varied meanings of holding space through architecture. By Bianca Velasquez
Our next gift guide travels to Salt Lake City and Provo, where shoppers can score upcycled clothing, wood-burned prints, and gender-affirming underwear. By Bianca Velasquez
The Southern Utah Museum of Art celebrates the legacy of Utah artist Jimmie F. Jones with a new semi-permanent exhibition space and permanent, interactive touchscreen kiosk. By Southern Utah Museum of Art
Elpitha Tsoutsounakis’s Unknown Prospect explores the material possibilities of ochre to showcase the beauty and agency of the Utah landscape and its nonhuman inhabitants. By Emily Arntsen
Midvale, Utah recently instituted a cultural revitalization project to enhance its downtown. A large mural depicting two nude figures and a ghoulish specter has become the talk of the town. […] By Scotti Hill
New Mexico artist Billy Schenck has made a successful career of cowboy-and-Indian pop-art imagery, but a recent exhibition of his work brings present-day debates over representation and authorship into the harshest of spotlights. By Steve Jansen
John Sproul, a prominent local artist and owner of Nox Contemporary, will close the gallery following the end of Jared Steffensen’s exhibition Idem, Norms, Dorms Mine on November 4, 2022. By Scotti Hill
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