Japanese taiko drums, a collection of frying pans, mixing bowls and blenders, and a small Scottish island called Jura might appear to be a curious, even odd list. However these have become inspirational elements for this year’s world premiere commissions in chamber music, jazz, and dance at the Utah Arts Festival. The trio of artists … Read more
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
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
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
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
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
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
For this year’s Utah Arts Festival, The Intermountain Acoustic Music Association (IAMA) is bringing a large contingent of folk, bluegrass, Irish, Celtic and acoustic musicians along with a nationally juried songwriting competition and a two-day songwriter’s academy open to musicians from beginning to advanced. Many of the events will culminate on IAMA Day, scheduled for … Read more
Not just a re-engineered concept of a traditional do-it-yourself culture of arts and craft, the ‘maker’ movement has catapulted to new ways of seeing how art equals technology, even in lifting mundane consumer products to aesthetically mesmerizing possibilities. Thanks to members of Salt Lake City’s EnjiGo Makerspace Foundation, this year’s Utah Arts Festival’s patrons will … Read more
After a rousing success last year at its first turn as a Utah Arts Festival venue, The Leonardo museum returns with a new series of workshops at the Art Lab; free, public interactive in which participants can build simple musculoskeletal systems and observe digital painting and sculpting in animation, and five pairs of artists – … Read more