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Exhibition Review
What's Up and Upcoming Around the State
OREM: UVSC Woodbury Art Museum presents the second annual Lucille T. Stoddard Women’s Exhibition, a juried art exhibit named after UVSC President Emeritus, Dr. Lucille T. Stoddard. The exhibit is open to any woman artist over the age of 18. As part of the exhibition, the Museum will host featured artist Rebekka Seigel.
Seigel, of Kentucky, is the country’s most renowned paper doll quilt artist. “I started making quilts over 25 years ago,” she writes. “My grandmother taught me the basics, but I left the traditional focus of my grandmother’s work to express my own personal view of the world through my quilts.”
Seigel's uses the quilt as any other artists might use a canvas or paper, placing imagery as varied as the Statue of Liberty, Paper Doll cutouts, and tattoed figures. In addition, Seigel spends much of her time teaching her techniques to interested parties of all ages and skill.
Seigel will present a three-day paper doll quilting workshop at the museum from June 16 -18, 2005, which includes a lecture about her latest series, Women’s Work. This series took six years to complete and honors thirteen women from the 20th century whose lives changed the fields of art, music, sports, politics, science, and human rights. Their stories are told through the garments they wore. The workshop only has 25 open spots and costs $120 for all three days. For more information or to register for the workshop please contact the museum at (801) 426-6199.
All exhibits are free and open to the public. The UVSC Woodbury Art Museum, located at University Mall in Orem, is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with extended hours on Wednesday to 8 p.m. The opening reception will be Friday, May 6 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. For more information about this or any other upcoming exhibits and events, visit www.uvsc.edu/gallery, or call (801) 426-6199.
PROVO: Friday, May 6th is Provo's Downtown Gallery Stroll. Local galleries will be open from 6 to 8 pm.
TERRA NOVA GALLERY: America the Beautiful through July 8th.
Visitors to the Brigham Young University Museum of Art who venture into the museum’s new exhibition of contemporary sculpture by New York City artist Johnston Foster will find themselves surrounded by a menagerie of creatures that seems to have escaped from an absurd Saturday morning cartoon.Foster’s unique visual language is a derivative of his life-long exposure to pop culture, mainly through television. His cartoon-like sculptures reflect the imagery and iconography of television and use that familiar language to promote further inquiry into the meanings of his work. “You learn the world from T.V.,” Foster said. “People know so many things without ever experiencing them first hand. As an artist I use that as a means of communicating.”
 Foster uses found materials such as duct tape, traffic cones, Venetian blinds, trash cans, packing peanuts, scraps of wood, and many other types of scavenged items to create his sculptures. He says the process of finding and including these discarded materials in his work is itself a metaphor for adaptation and survival. By using only what is available in his surrounding environment, Foster gives new life to the wastes and byproducts of human existence by taking them out of their original context and fashioning them into works of art.
However, the theatrical spectacle created by Foster’s sculptures masks an underlying tension between his coarsely constructed creatures and the man-made world they inhabit — a tension fueled by an instinctive competition for survival.
“Disenchanted Forest: Contemporary Art by Johnston Foster,” on view from April 19 through Sept. 3, 2005, consists of seven sculptures — six of which are equipped with animatronics — made from everyday objects.
SPRINGVILLE:Springville Museum of Art: .This past Friday, April 30th, Springville was host to the 2005 Art Ball, which welcomed the 81st annual Spring Salon. This exhibit of fine art from across the state will be on display through July 3rd. Read our June edition for a review of the exhibition. To have your own say on the exhibition, fill in our survey to the right.
PARK CITY: Kimball Art Center UP now through June 6th, an exhibit by Kimberly Roush called Birds: Essence and Iridescence. This is a stunning display of watercolors that captures the essence of Utah fowl. Roush is an accomplished Park City artist and bird enthusiast. Her goal in her work is to portray a sense of “being there with the birds” through her ability to achieve a sense of natural light and life. This exhibit marks Roush’s first public solo exhibition as a professional artist. Also UP now through May 28th is the artwork of Wasatch Back students grades K-12.
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OGDEN: Friday, May 6th is Ogden's First Friday Art Stroll. Many galleries in Ogden, including those on Historic 25th Street, will be open for this event Friday from 5 to 9 pm.
Eccles Community Art Center : Utah Watercolor show. Established in 1974, the Utah Watercolor Society is a non-profit organization, established to advance the art of painting in watercolors, to educate the public in the significance of watercolor as a creative, permanent painting medium, and to make watercolor paintings accessible to everyone. It shall also further the interests of painters in watercolor by its programs and competitive exhibits, and shall encourage the study of painting with watercolor.
The UWS holds yearly exhibits for its members and for Utah watercolor artists. The Annual Spring Show is open to any watercolor artist in the state of Utah. The paintings chosen for this exhibit were juried by nationally recognized artist, Tom Lynch.
Showing concurrently in the Carriage House is Richard M. Garland has lived and painted in Cache Valley for over 25 years. He works primarily in watercolors. His inspiration comes from his wife’s lovely flower gardens and from the surrounding landscape. He employs numerous techniques to achieve the subtle but rich color variations in his paintings. A favorite technique is using a dry brush on wet paper, layering colors for intensity.
Both shows will open this Friday, May 6th.
Universe City, located at 2556 Washington Blvd in Ogden, features the two-dimensional works of Ogden artist Fred Hunger in May. The theatre design work of award-winning WSU senior Theatre majors Chris Philion, (graduate 2005), and Cliff Wallgren, also will also be shown.
Hunger showed his sculptures in the gallery in April. However, he began his art career as a two-dimensional artist, achieving great skill in painting and printmaking. This exhibit is a retrospective of a lifetime of work. The exhibit will include serigraphs, linocuts, woodcuts, drawings, photos, acrylic paintings and one oil painting. “The oil painting is one of two I exhibited in a Paris show in 1964,” says Hunger. The paintings are mostly “hard edge,” and shows his precision and expertise when working with paint. Hunger, 68, spent 40 years working as an engineer, a “rocket scientist,” in the aerospace industry. During that time he also obtained a BFA from Weber State (then) College in 1977 and an MFA at el Universidad de Guanajuato, Instituto Allende in 1978. He taught as an adjunct at WSU for more than 10 years. In addition to working on campus, he has a large private sculpture studio where he continues to work daily.
"I have always been an artist," Hunger says. "Though I have done many things in life, each has contributed to my aesthetic goals. This is most realized in my work at this time of my life, the Autumn time."
The exhibit will run through May, Fridays, 5:00-9:00; Saturdays, from noon-9:00 pm, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 5:00-8:00 pm. Private appointments to view the exhibit individually or as a group tour can be made by calling 458-8959.
Letter from the Editor
Confessions of an Ezine Editor
Shawn Rossiter
I have a confession to make. It’ not something I’m proud of; not something I like to talk about. But I think it’s about time that I came clean. I’ve been keeping this part of my life a secret for too long and the only way I can get past it is to come out in the open.
I’ve been working on a dial-up connection.
I understand it may come as a shock to you. After all, AoU is supposed to be the example of the blend between fine art and fine technology. And here I am working in the stone age of the Internet.
For four years now I’ve been lumbering through cyberspace on the turbulent waters of a dialup connection. I’ve tried to keep the fact quiet. My most shameful incident happened about two years ago. The Artists of Utah office space was located in the back of Darryl Erdmann’s Chroma Gallery. To the denizens of Rockwood Art Studios I was the computer guru; the young kid with the technological gadgets. Darryl, no fan of the digital, saw me as the wise sage of cyberspace. Then, one day, a customer came in just as I was connecting online. The sound of the modem connecting to the phone line made an awful screech, causing the hair on this guy’s neck to stand up.
What is that?” he asked. “Are you actually using a dial up?”
I slunk into the corner of the desk, trying to block the sound the phone modem made crawling its way through cyberspace. Darryl never looked at my computer and me the same.
For two years I have lived with that shameful incident. But now everything has changed. I have broadband.
The first time I got connected, it was like some terrific caffeine rush. I felt like someone had shoved an espresso bar IV drip into my virgin Mormon veins and opened the valve full board. No waiting. No screeching phone line. The Internet came crashing over me like a tsunami of ones and zeros.
When I woke from the digitally induced coma, I realized I was finally seeing 15 bytes the way most of you are. Click. Boom. It’s there. In a flash. No image too big. No pixels too many.
And that is why we have switched the format of 15 bytes. In the past two issues you may have noticed that each page may contain over ten images. Right there at your fingertips. Brush your mouse over an image number and zappo, presto it’s there. That is, if you don’t have dial up connection.
To those of you that do, I feel your pain. I’ve been there. You are in my heart. But in my head, I’ve got to keep in mind the blindingly fast web surfers that are the majority of the audience.
Only one of you actually complained about the new format. To you, my apologies. I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. My suggestion: while you’re waiting for those pages to load, get a snack or use the restroom. And daydream about the day you too can be truly connected.
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Overcast skies did not deter 16 plein air artists from entering the 1st Annual Artistic Impressions Plein Air Paint-Out competition on Saturday April 30. The finished pieces had to be completed and submitted by 5:00 p.m. where they were judged and awarded prizes. The paintings are currently on display at Artists & Heirlooms on 25th Street in Ogden where an artist's reception will be held during the First Friday Art Stroll on May 6th. A silent auction is currently open for the displayed work, closing at 9:00 p.m. on May 6th. The exhibit will remain on display throughout the month of May as the featured show. The winners:Bruce Case - 1st; Cara Koolmees - 2nd; Stephen Hedgepeth - 3rd. Honorable mentions went to Doug Braithwaite, Debra Marin and Lynn Cozzens.The event was sponsored by Artists & Heirlooms and Ogden Blue.
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