Exhibition Review: Salt Lake City
Stephanie
St. Thomas: An Artist with a Legacy of Elegance
by Alexandra Blantyre
When
people first meet Stephanie Saint Thomas, they are taken by her graceful
and elegant presence. She is clearly a woman who has come into
her own and who knows love and loss. Stephanie’s work is an expression
of her heart. Her brushstrokes are bold and elegant, her jewel
toned acrylic pallet, rich and without apology. She orchestrates
her paint to dance in a reverie of passion. This is a woman that
means what she says and picks those she loves to love for life.
The whimsy might be that of laughter in the moonlight, but it is never
to be taken for fickle flight.
When one learns of Stephanie’s background, it’s easy to
understand how she found her place in the art world. Stephanie
Saint Thomas grew up in Europe until the age of 15. Her artist
parents, Gregory and Diane, both studied under the tutelage of Avard
Fairbanks, best known for designing the Eagle Gate. She was always
very close with her parents and they continue to be a major influence
to her, even after their deaths. While living in Holland, her father
was appointed one of the Crown Jewelers to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
Stephanie worked very closely with her father, especially
in jewelry design, which is the area she first began her career as
an artist, selling her collections at Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom,
Weinstocks and ZCMI. In addition to jewelry and fine art, she
started her objects d’art line, making collectable boxes, picture
and mirror frames and tables.
Her latest painting collection, entitled Portals,
includes many large expressionist landscapes, carried out in her
signature vibrant colors and finished with a lustrous resin. Many
of the pieces are framed with vintage church window frames. This
collection can be seen at Magpie’s Nest, located at 39 North “I” Street,
January 10th through February 13th. Magpie’s Nest will be open
for Gallery Stroll on January 16th, from 6-9pm. Please call 363-7764
or 277-6551 for more information.
Festival Event: Salt Lake City
Feed the
Hungry Foster the Arts
If you aren't able to catch Stephanie St. Thomas' artwork this
month at the Magpie's Nest (see above) you'll have a chance to see
her work and the work of over thirty other Utah artists at the upcoming
FEED THE HUNGRY FOSTER THE ARTS.
This annual event is sponsored by Catholic Community Services
to help raise funds to support the St. Vincent de Paul Dining
Hall and the Weigand Homeless Day Center
while promoting the work of local visual
artists. The Feed the Hungry Foster the Arts Festival
is the largest fund-raising event of the year for St. Vincent de Paul
Dining Hall and the Weigand Homeless Day Center. The St. Vincent de Paul
Dining Hall provides over 700 hot meals and sack lunches to low income and
homeless individuals and families every day. The Weigand Homeless Day Center
provides a wide array of human services including clothing distribution,
a library of donated books and magazines, barber services, mail service, showers,
laundry facilities and temporary job placement services.
The
Feed the Hungry Foster the Arts event was held for many years at the
St. Vincent de Paul Center. As program director Kathryn Brussard explains,
the CCS board decided to move the event out of the center because they
felt it was not appropriate to displace those who use the center's services
for the arts festival.
Consequently, last year the event was held at the Gateway's
Union Depot. The timing was also changed to early December. This
year the event will again be at the Union Depot but it will return to
its normal timing of early March.
The art festival will run from Friday March 5th until Sunday March
7th and will feature a wide range of visual arts including pottery, sculpture,
jewelry, painting, pastels and drawings.
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Gallery Spotlight: Kayenta
Juniper Sky
and Datura Gallery Worth the Drive
by Shawn Rossiter
These are the three most important factors in any business
and no less so in an art gallery. But tell that to the ladies of the
Juniper Sky and Datura galleries in Kayenta, Utah.
Located on a road to nowhere (well, to be fair, almost nowhere; Old
Hwy 91 will take you on a back route to Nevada, through the Shivwits
Indian Reservation) this small desert community has begun building
an artist's colony against the red cliffs of Southern Utah.
Kayenta, Utah is a small community of houses located west
of Ivins that began springing up in the 80's. If it were not for road
signs indicating the community, travelers might easily pass it by. Guided
by strict covenants, all the houses in Kayenta are one-story, low-lying
adobe style structures that blend into the landscape and, most importantly,
do not detract from the fabulous view of the Santa Clara Bench.
A couple of years ago artists and art lovers in the area
began creating Coyote Gulch, a small cluster of buildings grouped
together thwell withine community. At the artist's colony you'll
find a potter's shop and a small bookstore as well as the two galleries.
Juniper Sky and Datura are sister galleries, working in cooperation rather
than competition.
Datura gallery carries a variety of artwork, most of it smaller, ranging
from glass work and pottery to smaller pieces by some of Utah's better
known artists. Pieces by Gaell Lindstrom, Gary Collins and Jossy Lownes
can all be found within its walls. While stylishly displayed, Datura has
the feel of a fine gift shop, with its range of jewelry, glass and pottery
and art all in a Southwest motif.
The Juniper Sky Gallery is more exhibition oriented, featuring larger
pieces from Utah artists including Royden Card and Wallace Lee. The gallery
will be able to put on even larger exhibition when they move into their
new 3000 sq. foot facility, which will be ready in a few months.
You need not wait for the Juniper Sky Gallery's new space to open to
soak up the atmosphere of Kayenta and its growing art colony. During
the weekend of February 14th & 15th both galleries will be participating
in the 5th Annual Art in Kayenta Festival. During the festival over seventy
artists will participate in a fundraiser to support the Xetava Desert Arboretum
Foundation. This 501 (c)3 non-profit is currently creating the Desert Rose
Labyrinth, an eleven circuit labyrinth in Kayenta's desert setting.
Coyote Gulch Art Village is located 8 miles West of St. George, just
past the City of Ivins on Old Hwy 91. The 5th Annual Art in Kayenta Festival
will be Saturday and Sunday, February 14th & 15th from 10am to 5pm.
After stopping by Kayenta, be sure to visit some of the other artstops in the area. Currently at the St. George Museum of art you can visit two traveling exhibitions.
The Utah Arts Council traveling exhibit, "Colors of China" highlights colorful
art works created by Chinese children, between the ages of 6-12, from the
Hepingli Primary School in Beijing. This project was organized by the US
Chinese Peoples Friendship Association and The Beijing Peoples Association
for Friendship with Foreign Countries in order to further positive relations
and exchanges between other cultures. The Utah Arts Council has been
collecting global children's art for the purpose of touring the works throughout
the state, promoting creativity and understanding of various art forms and
cultures. The Traveling Exhibition Program is a statewide outreach service
of the Utah Arts Council.
"Just Like Me," an exhibit organized and toured by ExhibitUSA,
is a dynamic exhibition of illustrations from children's books, artists'
self-portraits selected from a book of the same title, and fine art prints,
paintings, drawings, and photography. For further information,
please call (435) 634-5942 x17 or email:
museum@infowest.com
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Exhibition Preview: Salt Lake City
Children
of the Muse and Endangered Species at Art Access
Children of the
Muse, A Photographic Exploration of the Creative Process, an ambitious
exhibition by noted Salt Lake photographer, Kent Miles, will hang later
this month at Salt Lake City's Art Access gallery.
In 1984, Miles, a graduate of the Art Center College
of Design in Pasadena, California, began a long association with
the Center for the Documentary Arts in Salt Lake City, where he has worked
to document ethnic and minority communities. His current project, which
has been years in the making, attempts to document and explore the lives
of creative people. The exhibition will consist of
black and white portraits of over twenty-five creative Utah men and
women, including painters, sculptors, architects, furniture designers,
arts educators, writers, cartoonists, ceramicists, performance artists,
costume designers and oral historians. The exhibition also includes interviews
of the artists exploring the creative impulse, along with a sample of the
creative work of each participant.
Miles says, "Through the past thirty years of making documentary portraits
I have had the rare privilege of meeting and photographing artists of Utah.
The desire took root in me to learn more about them, particularly about
how each one approaches the creative process. I knew that there was much
to be learned and the project Children of the Muse began to take
shape in my mind."
The title of the project refers to the Greek goddesses who were responsible
for inspiring artists and scientists especially music, dance, theatre,
poetry, painting and sculpture. As Miles explains, "They were the children
of Zeus and Mnemosyne. They would come to anyone who had the ability
to hear their voices. The question for artists became how did one cultivate
the ability to hear and respond to the Muse. The Muse, as a metaphor for
the mysterious process of inspiration in the creative process, was the
basis for my questions during the interviewing of the creative people
included in this project."
According to Miles, the Children of the Muse project starts
with this exhibit, which represents its first public debut. The documentary
photographer plans to continue photographing and interviewing not only
visual artists, but arts administrators, musicians, scientists, educators
and entrepreneurs anyone who applies the creative process to their
career or to their life.
In her upcoming exhibition Endangered Species, Lehi artist
Linnie Brown explores how combining opposite ideas and images can create
something new and impossible; something that one wouldn't or couldn't actually
create, except in the invented realm of art.
"The artworks in this series are derived from the idea of turning
everyday objects such as telephones and computer keyboards into fossils,"
the artist explains. "Obviously some of these items can quickly become
out-dated relics in our fast paced consumer society, but they will never
become actual fossils. Their plastic, non-organic construction guarantees
that these objects will still be around, even when their contemporaries
are long since decomposed."
Brown hopes that by viewing her abstract paintings, gallery-goers
will think about the process of time and what stories our possessions
will tell about us in the future.
Linnie Brown earned a BFA and Teaching Certificate from BYU and
has shown her work at the Bountiful Davis Art Center, the Atrium Gallery
and the Springville Art Museum. She was also one of the artists featured
in Artists of Utah's 35 x 35.
The non-profit Art Access
Gallery is located at 339 West Pierpont Avenue in Salt Lake City. Regular
gallery hours are M-F, 10 to 5.
Both exhibitions will hang from February 17 through March 12. The
Artist's Reception will take place on Friday, February 20, from 6 to 9
PM, during the Salt Lake Gallery Association's monthly Gallery Stroll.
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