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15 BYTES : February 2008 In This Issue Steven Lee Adams | Cara Despain On the Spot | About Us page 2 Steve Songer | SLAC: Looking for a New Director page 3 Laurel Casjens | Jean Arnold page 4 Minerva Teichert Book Review | Provo Gallery Stroll page 5 Artist Websites | Alpine's Seasons Gallery page 6 Kurt Nicaise & Peter Goss | Susan Swartz page 7 Up & Upcoming: Salt Lake page 8 Best of the Blog | Up & Upcoming: To The North page 9 Mixed Media | Up & Upcoming: To The South page 10 February 2008 Published monthly by Artists of Utah, a non-profit organization Exhibition Review: Salt Lake City Choosing Serendipity Laurel Casjens at Finch Lane Gallery by Jim Frazer Laurel Casjens is an unabashed tourist. The photographs in her exhibit at Finch Lane Gallery are, for the most part, landscapes or architectural subjects, but they were not taken with the calculated precision which characterizes most landscape or architectural photographers. Instead, the images were all taken on the move, on family trips with husband, grown children, various girl and boy friends all in train. Indeed Casjens says that being with her family is part of the process. The resulting aesthetic is more closely akin to that of street photography, where the photographer makes images from what is presented to her rather than trying to create an image by positioning herself in the landscape, setting up the camera, waiting for Artist Profile: Ogden the light. The images do not, however, have the Looking for Living Paint: Ogden's Steve studiedly abrupt cropping one associates with "snapshots as art" or the "caught in time" feeling of Songer the decisive moment. Instead, they are more like by Kimberly Rock | photos by John Steele the travel photos most of us take, made with as much care as the situation permits at the time. Vividly present in the current moment, Steve Songer creates pieces indicative of his positive intensity. By means mysterious, even to himself, A unique aspect of this selection of Casjens’ photos Songer channels his palpable freshness and immediacy into his widely- is that they are all made with a specially converted sought works, invigorating every subject he portrays. digital infrared camera. (If you get the idea you want to look into the conversion process for your "I have a theory that there's live paint and there's dead paint," says the own camera, it’s done by a company called Life Utah artist, "and I'm trying to get live paint." "What causes that, I don't Pixel). Essentially, this means that the visible light know. It just happens," he says, gesturing toward a large landscape-in-the that Casjens sees is not the light that is making the works. "This painting is really frustrating to me because I'm feeling like this image in the camera. And since the raw infrared paint's getting a little dead on me up here," he says, his fingertip circling image is a red tinted monochrome, the camera’s display can be used only for checking composition, above flat brown beginnings of leaves. As his hand drifts down to brisk not for previewing the actual tones in the finished white swirls, light leaping on boulders, he continues, "And this paint has image. The two most obvious differences between some good life. Do you see the difference?" an ordinary black and white photo and an infrared black and white photo is that the sky is dramatically continued on page 3 darkened, making the clouds stand out, and anything green, such as vegetation is made Exhibition Review: Ephraim strikingly lighter, seeming to glow. Since there is no Nicaise & Goss: Dueling Diptychs at the film involved, digital infrared photos lack the grainy look of images made with infrared film. One could CUAC add digital grain, which Casjens has not. by Geoff Wichert Interestingly, Casjens had never experimented with infrared until she got her digital camera converted. While carrying out his pivotal role in the early days of Modernism, Cezanne It was a desire to look at the world in a different found time to set a precedent for one of its characteristic exercises: in sixty- way and to portray what is literally not visible to the some paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire and uncounted tabletop naked eye that led her to make what she describes arrangements of apples, pears, bowls, and bottles, he showed that an artist as a leap of faith and send in her camera for can paint essentially the same subject over and over, seeking to wring from conversion. it every nuance of visual experience that its component parts can provide. continued on page 4 So it is that Kurt Nicaise and Peter Goss has each taken a finite set of elements --pigments, forms, colors, and gestures for Nicaise, photographers' conventions and choices for Goss -- and rearranged them according to a limited set of self-made rules. The results recall the linguistic principle that a finite number of words and transformational rules can produce an infinite variety of sentences. Since paint provides more permutations, Nicaise's panels are richer and call forth a greater range of feelings. Goss, who chose to work with the capacity of photographs to store information and make associations, evokes fewer, more cerebral delights with, for those so inclined, a powerful and at times eerie sense of dislocation in time. continued on page 7 PAGE 1 PAGE 6 PAGE 2 PAGE 7 PAGE 3 PAGE 8 PAGE 4 PAGE 9 PAGE 5 PAGE 10 February 2008 Page 2 Steven Lee Adams by Tami Baum Steven Lee Adams' studio space, located in a new building in the heart of Alpine, is a combination studio, gallery space and frame shop. Adam's easel and paints stand at the center of the space, surrounded by beautifully framed and well-lit art. One corner of the space serves as a frame shop -- which comes in handy because Adams likes to freqeuently place a work in progress in a frame to see how it is coming along. Though most of the paintings completed here can go quickly up on the walls, a back room provides more storage for paintings and supplies. Adams keeps works in progress on the easel or against the walls, even during the Alpine Gallery Stroll, an event that occurs the first Thursday of every even month. So you can check out the combination space and a lot of Adams' art this Thursday, February 6th, 5-9 pm. Or visit the artist's website for more info. Feature: On the Spot 15 Bytes: About Us Salt Lake City's Cara Despain This Edition Tom Alder recently left a 30-year mortgage banking career to become a partner in Williams Fine Art where he specializes in early Utah art. In December, he received his MA from the University of Utah in art history and wrote his thesis about Henri Moser. He also serves on the board of the Museum of Utah Art and History. Tami Baum is a native of Utah. She graduated from BYU in Education but has always been more fond of the arts. She found photography after the birth of her last child and has not put the camera down since. Ehren Clark received his BA in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Critcism at the University of Utah and an MA in the art of the Renaissance at the University of Reading, UK. He currently writes for the In Utah This Week, as well as being published in other journals in Utah. Cara Despain was born in Salt Lake City, attended the University of Utah and graduated with a BFA in 2006. She Jim Frazer, originally from Atlanta, has been living is a painter and freelance art writer. Her work is currently and working as an artist in Salt Lake for the past on display in Talkies, a group show at Saan's Gallery seven years. He is part of the Field Showing through February 13. She will also be part of the Round performance and exhibit at the Womens Art Center Four group show at Kayo Gallery opening February 15. later this month. What hangs above your mantel? Gerry Johnson, a native of Minnesota but Utah resident for the last A drawing on a torn off book cover by Todd Christensen thirty years, is an engineer by training but a creator at heart. Along from his show at the Pickle Company last year. It was a with engineering day jobs, he has run a metal sculpture (brass, piece I really loved at the show, and a certain someone copper and steel) business and is now now delving deeply into surprised me with it as a gift. digital photography to satisfy his creative need. Gerry can be reached at [email protected]. What is your favorite building in Utah? Ruth Lubbers has been Executive Director of VSA arts of Utah since 1993. She moved to Salt Lake It's sort of a toss up between the Old Paper Mill and the City in 1981 from Western Michigan where she was old transformer station about half a mile up Big Fine Arts Coordinator for the Muskegon Area Cottonwood Canyon. Intermediate School District. Ruth currently serves as a Board member for the Utah Arts Festival, the What is the most memorable exhibit you've seen Utah Museums Association and Artists of Utah. recently? Sue Martin holds an M.A. in Theatre and has worked The Rubell Family collection in Miami -- Nathalie in public relations. As an artist, she works in watercolor, Djurberg's video work in particular. oil, and acrylic to capture Utah landscapes or the beauty of everyday objects in still life.
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