Exhibition Review: Salt Lake City
Wild Inquiring
The Art of Claire Taylor
by Jody Plant

For a graveyard, the Salt Lake City Cemetery teems with life. Covering 120 acres and about 10 miles of paved road, the largest city-operated cemetery in the country is home to a varied and plentiful array of flora and fauna. Not far from the city center is a wild kingdom, a vast, otherworldly realm offering open space and refuge for countless bird life, including fowl and raptors, fox, deer, elk, squirrel, raccoon, porcupine, and an occasional stray moose, not to mention nature lovers and curious artists.

Claire Taylor is one such artist, who has compiled her findings into a small book of illustrations and creative nonfiction called The Inhabitants of the Salt Lake Cemetery. Taylor also digitally printed and hand-bound the book herself, something that as the former Studio Manager and Instructor at the University of Utah Book Arts Program and Lead Printer for the Red Butte Press at the J. Willard Marriott Library, she is more than qualified to do. The book’s whimsical images and evocative text are showcased in the current exhibition at the new Marmalade City Library Branch, through June 24.

For many years, the cemetery has been Taylor’s personal sanctuary and source of inspiration. The wildness of her immediate environment has always informed her sense of world and self. She admits that for most of her young life, she preferred the company of animals more than people and struggled to find her comfort zone among humankind. Luckily, she soon discovered creative outlets which put this schism to good use.

While jogging through the cemetery, Claire examines life deeply, asking questions and seeking answers to the mysteries she encounters on her path. From the antics of magpies and red foxes, to the silent death swoop of the great horned owl, there is a unique charm and wry humor in the way she anthropomorphizes wild animal behavior. Towards the end of the book, she writes:

Later in the dream the three-eyed owl turned into a teenaged boy. The boy still possessed the owl’s third eye. I noticed that the third eye, positioned between the other two eyes, had a misshapen pupil.

What did that owl and his counterpart boy see with that ill-formed third eye? Did the third eye compliment their vision or disturb it?

I feel as though there is something I need to learn from this dream.

Indeed, seeing through a uniquely shaped third eye is an apt metaphor for Taylor’s fine-tuned intuition and delicate uniqueness. What might seem like storybook images are actually full of unusual depths and layers. The foxes in her pictures bristle with yellow static electricity, their wiry fur and upturned snouts an articulate contrast to the impressionistic backdrops, swirls of color and texture that evoke rather than represent. There is movement in these images. They are not posed portraits of happy forest creatures. The owl’s angst is depicted with striking red lines across the forehead. There are real stories here, often just hinted at in the narrative, but full of character and conflict nonetheless.

Working primarily in color pencil, subtle watercolor washes, relief printmaking, and language, Taylor’s delicate yet vibrant touch offers viewers an energetic and joyful peek into a personal, thriving universe. Part fantasy, part confessional, hers is a world in which one can joyfully lose oneself or be reminded to pay more attention to the creatures who share this planet with us. Her affinity for the wild things and places is immediately evident, and so is her tenderness for her own species. The humans in her work, often close friends, are also in a state of gentle flux as they interact with the natural world.

Taylor grew up in a family surrounded by artists, writers, and scientists who encouraged her to find inspiration through her own explorations and inquiries, most of which occurred in the natural world close to home. She recently completed an MS degree in Environmental Humanities, rounding out her BFA in Fine Art (with a printmaking emphasis). Her work truly embodies the marriage of art and science into a harmonious whole.

For an intimate view, visit Claire’s current exhibition and her website, owlandcoyote.com.

“The Inhabitants of the Salt Lake City Cemetery,” Illustrations by Claire Taylor, through June 24, Salt Lake City Library, Marmalade Branch, Salt Lake City, 801-594-8680, www.slcpl.org

The Salt Lake City cemetery is located between “N” and “U” streets and Fourth Avenue and Wasatch Boulevard.

Exhibition Spotlight: Springdale
Let's Go Back to Rockville
Exhibition seeks to save historic bridge
by Alisha Burton

It isn’t often that a humanmade structure in the shadow of Zion Canyon captures the interest of the art community surrounding Zion National Park, but this month the historic Rockville Bridge has done just that, in the aptly named “Rockville Bridge Exhibition and Sale” June 1-July 11 at the Canyon Community Center in Springdale.

The purpose of the show is to celebrate, and raise funds for the preservation and renovation of the Rockville Bridge, says Jodi McGregor, an artist and Rockville community member spearheading the exhibit. A silent auction running the length of the exhibit will benefit the Rockville Bridge Capital Improvement Fund. The Green Bridge, as it has been called in days past, was originally built in 1924 as part of the Park to Park Highway System. Spanning the Virgin River, it trimmed 33 miles from the journey between Zion, Bryce, and Grand Canyon National parks, creating the Grand Circle Tour. It is now the last remaining steel 12-panel Parker through-truss bridge in Utah.

While the Bridge initially was built to entice tourists, it has evolved into a symbol of Rockville’s dedication to remain a quiet agrarian town, despite increasing waves of Zion-bound tourists and swelling suburban sprawl in nearby cities. Rockville townspeople are proud of the fact that the only commercial businesses in the town are bed and breakfasts, says Bridge Fundraising Committee member Joyce Hartless.

The effort by the town and the local artist community to save the bridge follows a decision by the Joint Highway Commission in April of this year to renovate, rather than replace the bridge, increasing the load capacity from 14 to 25 tons, thereby ensuring emergency and other services to homeowners across the Virgin River from State Highway 9. The decision comes much to the relief of the Rockville community, who were in favor of keeping the original bridge, Hartless says. As part of the decision, the town must raise 6.77 percent of the $2.5 million estimated to complete the project.

McGregor says she was attending a fundraising meeting when someone brought up the idea of enlisting artists to save the bridge and volunteered her services. Charged with gathering and hanging the artwork, McGregor says she has enjoyed seeing varied interpretations of the bridge.  “The Rockville Bridge is our icon here. It’s like our Statue of Liberty.”

The bridge even made an appearance in popular media when it was used by the Piano Guys in their online music video, ”Home.”

Artwork in various genres and media is represented in the “Rockville Bridge Exhibition and Sale,” including a healthy number of bridge paintings done in the style of traditional realism and impressionism, and photography with a strong narrative element, which befits the marketing and educational ambitions of the show, as well as a few stylistically unique contributions, such as Chip Chapman’s tongue-in-cheek “Rockville Bridge is Falling Down,” an homage to Roy Lichtenstein as well as, apparently, Rockville community member Paul Allen.

Even within the realistic depictions, there is variety in approach to portraying the Rockville Bridge. The bridge in the delicate pastel by Patricia Rose Ford peeks coyly from the cottonwoods; in Kira Sanoja’s nocturne only the top of the bridge is visible beneath the canopy of clear sky. Each shows a structure that by age or anthropomorphic sentiment has come to be regarded as more a part of the local landscape than infrastructure.

Absent from the exhibit, at least at the time of this writing, were images depicting the bridge in its green-hued glory days, curious considering it is entirely possible that the bridge will be restored to its original industrial green.

The “Rockville Bridge Exhibition and Sale” is worth a stop for advocates of historic preservation as well as an interesting artistic representation of a community actively protecting its economic niche. Those interested in additional information as it comes available can do so through the Historic Rockville Bridge Facebook page.

“Rockville Bridge Exhibition and Sale,” June 1-July 11, Canyon Community Center, Springdale. Live art auction, June 10, 7-9 p.m.,former Rockville Schoolhouse, Rockville, ticketed event, more info.