Our thanks to the Palmers Gallery and to the Intermountain Society of Artists for hosting a great reception Friday before last for ISA show entrants and winners. We were able to meet a lot of other artists and see some great work. Here are some pictures of the event:

The Palmers Gallery on 378 West and 300 South in Salt Lake City will be hosting a reception for the annual Intermountain Society of Artists juried show this Friday. If you are out and about the town for the monthly Gallery Stroll, stop into Palmer’s and see the ISA’s resulting collection.

Here’s an article in the UK’s Telegraph about a new art show called ‘Dark Matter’ - a room full of black canvases, black boxes, black fly-encrusted rubbish bags, etc. The show is at the ‘White Cube’ oddly enough. I love the lengths to which some art critics will go to explain why they like whatever it is they’re reviewing.

“The funny thing about entering a room full of art made in black is not that you are oppressed by negativity and darkness, but that your senses fine-tune themselves to an appreciation that feels altogether more sensitive and sensuous than if you were confronted with the jewel-like hues of a rainbow.”
Are you feeling sensitive and sensuous now?

“Painted in deep black matt, it seems to suck in the light around it, and develop a negative lustre all its own. Mesmeric, seductive, worshipful, it’s an arch and brilliant joke that Fritsch is playing: inspiring an unholy adulation of a statue named after herself, in a colour traditionally that of evil.”

You can’t make this kind of navel-gazing up. Heh.

I happened across last month’s ‘Carnival of the Capitalists’ on The Rule of Reason and found a short piece on Bryan and the ‘New Years’ Artist Studio. It was very positive and also contained a polite suggestion from its author Nicholas, which was something along the lines of, “Let’s see more of the front end!”

Heh, heh. Point well taken Nicholas. Here is an excerpt of my comment on his post:

“… Composition and theme are frequent topics of ours when discussing new paintings and this very issue has come up as often. If you view the life of an artist as a progression, from novice to master, and not simply happy accident after happy accident there will always be something deficient and something to work on next. Bryan has spent the last year and a half working on this very important deficiency. Most of this work is not at Quent Cordair at this point in time for viewing, but Bryan frequently discusses his most recent work [here]…”

Thanks very much for the mention and the encouragement Nicholas.

We reported this to our HOA management on June 6th. It was flooding our yard and seeping under the driveway until we went and bought a bunch of sand bags to divert it back into the street. We’ve called the water agency and our HOA at least a dozen times each about this and there are many promises made - and nothing done.

Heaven help you if you have an HOA.

Last month Dave Gagon, a columnist for our local rag, the Deseret News, wrote an article entitled “The Thriving Artist“. In it Mr. Gagon highlighted a few artists in our locale with the soft-spoken mission of creating an atelier in Utah where classical-realists could thrive. The main proponent of this new venture is one Ryan Brown, a graduate from a drawing program in Italy’s Florence Academy of Art in 2003. Here is a very delicately put explanation of the reasons why Brown and the Springville Museum of Art’s Director Vern Swanson believe this school would accentuate an aspiring artist’s proverbial palette:

“There [are] two philosophies,” Swanson said. “One is, don’t worry about skills. Just express yourself, and your inner self will find a level of skill to accomplish the work; the level tends to be a lower level of skill, but a higher level of interpretation.” The other, according to Swanson, is the academically trained artist who, while highly skilled, often has very little to say of substance. There’s a gulf between the two, but Swanson and Brown believe both philosophies are necessary and important to different artists for different reasons. “We just don’t want art students to be shackled by their own inability,” said Brown, who believes a bridge between the two philosophies would help all artists.
But both Brown and Swanson are skeptical that a university setting — given its class-time restrictions — can give students the type of atelier training many desire. “Not to take away from anything the university is doing,” Brown said, “because they teach good art principles. But I think if you can get the training off campus, it will build on what they’re getting at the university.” So the goal for Brown and his group: to create artists of technical virtuosity who will make substantive statements in a contemporary environment . . . not unlike [John Singer] Sargent.”

That’s a lot of tip-toeing and I would LOVE to follow up on this given the chance. (I’ll see if Ryan will send me more info. and perhaps a more emphatic statement.) I would also love to take it as the tip of an iceberg in both Utah and eventually across the nation. The people who have worked so hard to learn and practice (and practice and practice – believe me I’ve watched it) these skills despite the lack of substantive instruction deserve as much. I want the straight skinny! I want a bold statement! “COME LEARN HERE! We’ll teach you what you aren’t getting in your so-called art classes! We’ll teach you what is actively, vigilantly, persistently being taught out of you!”

I read a lot about the arts in any given day but don’t publish on the bulk of it here because (in typical blogger fashion) it doesn’t facilitate my point. I’ll be totally clear about having an agenda to put across in this blog. The mission statement here is nothing short of a concerted effort to persuade the art pendulum back to center – and to participate in a national dialogue about it! So speak up you closet art lovers. If not here, then your own circle of friends. Who are your favorite artists and why? What do they bring to your life? Why do they move you to tears? These are the thoughts and ideas that people need to discuss, and it is especially what people entrenched in ‘the culture’ need to hear.

“There is virtue in virtuosity, especially today, when it protects us from the tedious spectacle of ineptitude.”

Robert Hughes,
“Nothing if Not Critical”

There you have it: ‘Among The Clouds IV’…and, just as I predicted, it’s a sunset.