Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: Literary Arts venue expands to many elaborate forms of writing, performance, interactive expression

NOTE: This preview of the Literary Arts venue for this year’s Utah Arts Festival is written by Amy Childress, one of the well-connected young individuals in Salt Lake City’s literary arts scene. Since Melissa Bond organized the Big Mouth Stage in 1995, the Literary Arts program at the Utah Arts Festival has expanded into a venue of … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: Fear No Film confronts, transcends boundaries in cinematic art

For the 12th annual Fear No Film portion of the Utah Arts Festival, curator Topher Horman has crafted seven sequences of presentations in the most imaginative interpretations of the various sources and origins of stories. Each program is described below. Your Boundaries (June 27, 2 p.m,; June 29, 6 p.m.) These films, representing our propensity … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: Strongest slate ever for Utah Short Film of The Year competition

If last year’s Utah Short Film of the Year competition was of titanic proportions then this year’s slate should leave no doubt how Utah’s independent filmmaking community is flexing its artistic muscle with transformative impact. Last year’s winners from OHO Media, who won with ‘Boomtown’ from the Lost and Found Series are back. Also, Brigham … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: Fear No Film’s boundaries reach every corner of the globe

There are some who suggest that boundaries are disappearing in a society more focused on globalization. They argue that boundaries certainly have become more permeable, perhaps even disappearing. However, boundaries — physical and symbolic, visible or invisible — always are stubborn despite what some narratives might suggest. The fences, lines and edges of boundaries are … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: Artists Marketplace represents tremendous passion, ingenuity in countless forms, art media

This year’s Utah Arts Festival’s Artist Marketplace provides a great overview of how 21st century artists have come into their own careers. While many whose creative passion was evident from their childhood years fortified it with formal training and university art programs, others capitalized on their intensely personal motivations by teaching and training themselves, unfazed by … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: A grand preview to show why this is not your grandparents’ art festival

When the gates open on June 26 to Utah’s largest arts and cultural gathering in its central downtown location, festival visitors will see as many new faces as familiar ones in every single venue and event. There are familiar and new faces everywhere. For example, the artist marketplace will have 163 artists including 56 from … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: Karen Horne’s ‘Night and Day’ exhibition is colorful love letter to Salt Lake City’s street life

The great French impressionist Claude Monet experimented extensively not only with light and shadow in his work but also with combinations and contrasts in color. In the Haystack Series, he painted the same scene repeatedly at different times of the day, almost in a scientific trial-and-error approach to observe how light and shadows fell upon and transformed … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: Australia’s Strange Fruit raises artistic experience to new heights on festival plaza

Twice each evening during the Utah Arts Festival with a soundtrack that includes musical excerpts from Mozart to swing, four performers will act out a universally approachable timeless story of a boy and girl in romance, expressing love, loss, jealousy and joy. However, the quartet of performers will be dancing, flirting and adding comic gestures while atop … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: John McCutcheon’s master storytelling, folk musicianship highlights IAMA events

Music sometimes builds the most emotionally appropriate bridges, as we contemplate the fragile nature of our humanity. In the 1990s, Vedran Smailović, a cellist from Bosnia and Herzegovina who now lives in northern Ireland, played music among the ruins during the siege of Sarajevo in the Balkan War. His musical gesture inspired a solo work … Read more

Backstage at Utah Arts Festival 2014: IAMA brings songwriter academy, songwriting competition to festival

Songwriters of every skill level, from beginner to professional, will have plenty of activities along with networking opportunities during the Intermountain Acoustic Music Association (IAMA) Day on June 28 at the 38th Utah Arts Festival. For the first time, IAMA’s songwriter academy, now in its 7th year, and the finals of the nationally juried Susanne … Read more