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"Is this art?"

Have you ever asked yourself this question?

"But that's not art!"

Does this declaration sound familiar?

If so, you may want to pack your lunch this Friday and join the Salt Lake County Art Collection Committee's new panel discussion, "Art Too! Art Not!"

This new brown-bag panel discussion series came about due to Committee member Jay Stone's interest to see lively discussion about the visual arts. Stone is an assistant district attorney for the County who serves on the Art Committee and is currently the chair of the Brown-bag Subcommittee.

The brown-bag series has been going on since 2000. In the past, artists were asked to come and discuss their work. Stone wanted something different this year.

"I enjoy listening to artists," Stone explains, "more in private conversations than in public discourse, but my favorite vehicle for understanding a subject is in the give and take of a discussion of knowledgeable persons. I enjoy listening to smart people challenge each others' ideas. It's one thing to stand up and sound smart when you are alone. It is a completely different experience to stand up and express an opinion, knowing that an equally qualified expert is going to critique your ideas."

Stone hopes the discussions will be a hit with the public.

"The public enjoys the format, just look at the half-time shows during the NFL games. Worn out, has-been quarterbacks and fired coaches argue the calls, judgments, and rules with each other to the delight of millions of viewers and a bunch of advertizers. The television networks utilize media-person as panelist and energetically discuss money, politics, and current events -- so why not ART?"


For the inaugural debate, billed as a "Heavyweight Art Fight," the Committee has invited four members of the visual arts community to participate.

Lee Deffebach (artist), Ric Collier (Director Salt Lake Art Center), Dave Gagon (Visual Arts Reporter for the Deseret News), Shawn Rossiter (Artist, Editor of 15 BYTES) will duke it out on Friday, June 20th. A number of "art objects" will be on display to spur the discussion. A new group of artists and art professionals will be invited to participate at each of the discussions. Future participants include Dave Ericson and Richard Oman.

The County's brown-bag series will continue every third Friday of the month (Gallery Stroll!) at 12:00pm at the Rose Wagener Performing Arts Center.

Stone, who will be moderating June's panel, is excited to see what will happen: "What I hope will come out of the event is passionate and articulate debate about aesthetics, that will help the audience form, or re-form, their own opinions about art."

Will he be right? Will "Art Too! Art Not!" become the Utah visual arts version of The McLaughlin Group, Wall Street Week, and Washington Week in Review?

Or will the Jerry Springer mentality prevail as security personel attempt to keep Dave Gagon and Shawn Rossiter from assaulting each other over whether or not a velvet Elvis is art?

To find out, tune in (brown-bag optional) Friday June 20th at 12:00pm at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 West Broadway.

Exhibition Review: Provo
From Nauvoo to Provo:
Six Utah Artists Intersect at BYU

The Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art is currently holding a unique exhibition.  “Intersections: Recent Paintings by Six Utah Artists” presents over 75 works by three generations of Utah artists: Frank Magleby, James C. Christensen, Gary Ernest Smith, Robert Marshall, Christopher Young, and Douglas Fryer.


These artists' paths have all crossed before, through the nexus of the University's art program.  Christensen, Smith and Marshall all studied under Magleby when they attended BYU. And Young and Fryer studied under all four artists.  Most recently, these artists' paths crossed when they came together to create the murals In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Nauvoo Temple. 

The LDS Church showed an early interest in mural painting for their temples, even sending "artist missionaries" to France for study in the late nineteenth-century. This interest waned after the 1920s, however. When Magleby graduated from Brigham Young University in the fifties, he went to the Arts Student League in New York to study mural painting, hoping to work on temple murals. The Los Angeles temple murals had just been completed. Unfortunately, they were to be the last the Church commissioned for nearly fifty years -- until the Nauvoo Temple.

It was only fitting, then, that Magleby directed the work on these murals. The Nauvoo Temple project was one in which the six artists' different temperaments and styles were required to work together in a collaborative effort to make a unified whole. Marshall and Fryer painted scenes for the Creation Room; Young and Christensen decorated the Garden Room; and Frank Magleby and Smith created the World Room. The artists discussed the problems and issues at hand before working, but in the end, each artist was given a wall upon which to express their personal vision.

“Intersections” gives these six artists different walls to work with and another vision of the six artists for the public to see. The show allows each of the artists to present their recent individual works.

Christensen is best known for his fantasy work.  His "Enoch Altarpiece" combines his detailed illustrative technique with a religious theme. The majority of his works on display show small, Renaissance-style portraits echoing both the masters they are emulating as well as Christensen's fantasy work. It's Brueghel rummaging through C.S. Lewis's wardrobe.

Young's paintings are done in a hyper-real technique, depicting mostly still life, symbolic works. They have the power to grab your attention in a steely grip, revealing, as Young says, "that there can be pictorial drama in seemingly ordinary natural objects, if we slow down and take the time to really see."

Most of the works by Smith will seem familiar to anyone who has seen this artist's recent work – large fields worked up in heavy impasto with the horizon line near the top of the painting. Two of the works reveal some of the influence the work on the Nauvoo Temple may have had on the artist. "Saint" is a "portrait" of a nineteenth-century figure imbued with a wonderfully soft and calming light. The face has echoes of Joseph Smith but remains generic enough to symbolize a type of person rather than an individual.  "Family Tree," shows a backyard scene, depicting Smith’s childhood home from memory. A large tree -- with subtle hints of faces in the trunks and magpies spread across the branches -- looms over the figure of a young male and two pets.

Magleby's landscapes hark back to nineteenth- century American landscape painting, owing, it seems, a great deal to Thomas Moran.

Frye's body of work is a series of large landscapes depicting the harsh desert landscapes of the Colorado plateau.

If Frye's work will make you parched, Marshall’s will quench your thirst.  His intimate views of creeks, ponds, waterfalls and other bodies of water -- "temporary sanctuaries" as he calls them -- are as refreshing to the eyes as a cool drink of water.

The BYU Museum of Art's "Intersections" is a marvelous visual testimony to the work of six unique Utah artists.

Intersections will be on display at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art through September 13th.  For more information please call: 801-422-8287.