Early summer is always special at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA). The Utah Review looks at some of the latest exhibitions, including the 10th anniversary edition of Out Loud (2026) and the works by 44 Utah artists that are available in the 2026 Gala Art Auction. Another is the fascinating and ingeniously conceived installation, from where the sun is, to wherever you are, by Ariel C. Wilson and Matt Kowal.
Ariel C. Wilson and Matt Kowal: from where the sun is, to wherever you are
The current installation in UMOCA’s AIR Space, the gallery which traditionally features one of the museum’s periodic artists in residence, is from where the sun is, to wherever you are by Ariel C. Wilson and Matt Kowal. This installation is wholly fascinating in its outcome as well as in the logistical process of its creation. With live imagery gathered from webcams positioned in 24 time zones, the installation continuously follows the evolving cycle of daylight and darkness.
It’s a striking experience. The viewer is enveloped in a spherical space that allows them to view the sky in light and darkness. Spend enough time with the installation and one can rediscover the elemental joy and wonder of what it can feel like to witness a natural phenomenon that we regrettably do not allow ourselves enough time to linger and appreciate it in patience and with fresh reverence.
In an interview with The Utah Review, Wilson talked about the process for the current installation, which is the most recent iteration of an ongoing collaboration started in 2021. She and Kowal, both of whom have known each other for a long time, started taking screenshots of the sunset through the Tuolumne Meadows webcam at Yosemite National Park, near where her partner was living at the time. “There wasn’t any cell or internet service,” she recalled. “All the time goes to watching the sunset so it was like the perfect view to try to connect to that place for me.”
The two conceptualized how to capture and articulate the beauty of those webcam experiences. In 2023, they scripted and automated the process of capturing images from various webcams, which were, according to Wilson, “personally significant, that were nearby and quite beautiful like over the Grand Canyon and over the Colorado River.” Perplexed about what to do with a substantial archive of imagery, Wilson and Kowal realized that it was the live imagery which was most impactful. The first version was a three-monitor video installation with a live feed, which was shown in a friend’s small Salt Lake City gallery. The webcams were selected based on time zones and the time of sunset: the middle one was in the Mountain Time Zone, with the Pacific and Central time zones flanking the middle one on either side.
In the second iteration, the artists took out the horizon imagery, which is similar to the current UMOCA installation. Scripts were written to download and display imagery from publicly available webcams and they rented space on a server. In its simplest form, it is a web browser displaying imagery on a server. With the UMOCA residency, Wilson said the task was to make it encompass a continuous stream 24 hours every day so that anywhere a viewer could find the point of sunrise or sunset at any time.
All of this entails enormous background work. They continuously update a Google spreadsheet, and monitor a huge database of all the webcams they use. “We’ve had to eliminate many that are unreliable, and even as we speak, we check the scripts every season to make sure that they’re functioning,” Wilson explained. “But now we’ve also written into the programming a workaround in case one of the images goes down which happens all the time.” In earlier iterations, this happened more frequently so now they have a backup camera to ensure continuity in the installation.
“I’ve been really interested in cycles and in the cyclical nature of what seems to be the universe and my own experience as a living being,” Wilson said. “We were interested in whether it is functioning as a clock or as cinema. The refresh rate is dictated by each camera so some of them refresh maybe like every minute and others are up to 30 minutes. We’ve also changed the way that it refreshes.” To mute the sense of the viewer noticing the hard refresh, the artists have significantly slowed down the video.
Wilson has noticed that some visitors just peek into the installation and quickly move on to something else. “I feel like I’ve always made slow work, but yeah, when I think about the most impactful times in my life for me is like lying by the river, watching the clouds and the waters or listening to the birds. I think there’s something deeply important about slowing down,” she added.
Wilson’s point is important. John Berger’s marvelous 1991 essay Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye, is relevant here. Look at a painting, drawing, print, etc. and we are rapt by the artwork’s characteristic of being timeless but also a still in a specific moment. Film, on the other hand, as Berger asserted, is a mode of transit that taps into a collective global subconscious where we engage and expand our emotions and sensations into deeper realms that prime our imaginations. “What is saved in cinema when it achieves art is a spontaneous continuity with all of mankind. It is not art of the princes or of the bourgeoisie,” he wrote. “It is popular and vagrant. In the sky of the cinema [emphasis added] people learn what they might have been and discover what belongs to them apart from single lives. Its essential subject – in our century of disappearances – is the soul, to which it offers a global refuge.”
Indeed, technology has facilitated our capacity to connect across great and remote distances but it also has disconnected us from the vastness of the environment that is right before our eyes, especially when we take the moment to look upward.
This installation is enlightening for ourselves, as patrons who visit museums and decide how much time we spend with specific galleries or even singular works of art. During a walkthrough in UMOCA, it was easy to see how one could spend more time than they might anticipate when they enter this installation. The work on which Wilson and Kowal collaborated is well worth the extra time because the payoff of viewing with patience and perseverance in mind does lead to the elucidating point that Berger mentioned in his essay. This compels us to slow down and while its creation arose from a sophisticated and elaborative technological basis it’s actually drawing us back to something fundamental that we love and probably have forgotten what it really is like to experience gazing at the “sky of the cinema.”
Composer Carey Campbell scored the installation’s sound design, which included students and staff from Weber State University who contributed their voices to the installation.
Wilson and Kowal will discuss the development of the project, their collaborative process, and the exhibition’s engagement with photography, environmental observation, global connectivity, and the relationship between representation and lived experience, at a free, public talk on June 4 at 7 p.m. in the AIR Space Gallery.
OUT LOUD: 10TH ANNIVERSARY
Always a wonderful lead-in to the Utah Pride celebrations that will take place in downtown Salt Lake City June 5-7, Out Loud 2026 is one of the current exhibitions at UMOCA, featuring work by 18 young artists representing various Utah high schools. They completed a 12-week workshop series in this special anniversary edition of the museum’s Out Loud program.
As in previous editions of Out Loud, the young artists have produced liberating and compellingly personal artistic testaments in their work. If there is an overarching theme in the works presented this year, it would be the contemplation of being in foreboding, even dire, environments and the acute awareness these young artists observe in a society where the trust bank has been so alarmingly depleted, in order for them to feel safe, confident and resilient. In various works, artists respond to rampant corruption in government, the criminalization of immigration, detention camps, pollution, grief, loneliness, history’s accurate symbolism, dysphoria, and the thwarting of due process and the principles upon which the country declared its independence 250 years ago. Collectively, these young artists make for astute sociopolitical barometers of the current moment, in intelligently conceived works.
As in previous Out Loud editions, the artists explore quite a range of media in creating their work— soft sculpture, printmaking, sustainable fashion. 16-mm film, miniature diorama and performance.
During the workshops, the artists learned from professional queer artists and then decided individually how they wanted to respond to the challenges of coming-of-age as a young queer individual in Utah. Some of the artists are identified only by their first names, given that some are not yet out for fears of being ostracized by their families and friends. Organizers also led a workshop to reach young rural artists, in conjunction with the Encircle chapter in St. George, so that students created work to be published in a zine which Riso Geist designed and published. The zine also includes works from the current cohort of Out Loud artists as well as alumni, mentors and this year’s lead facilitators, Alison Neville, UMOCA educator, and local artist Alisha Anderson, along with L-E, who founded the program.
UMOCA 2026 GALA ART AUCTION
Forty-four Utah artists have donated artwork for the 2026 Annual Gala Art Auction Exhibition, in which auction proceeds will directly benefit artists and community members through UMOCA’s exhibitions, education, and Artist-in-Residence programs, thereby supporting an expansive and experimental arts scene in Utah. The auction generated $42,250 last year and the gala (held annually in June)overall raised nearly $380,000. This year’s response is crucial, given the fresh challenges arts organizations around the country have faced due to the current presidential administration’s hostility toward supporting arts and cultural entrepreneurship in general.
The works are on display through June 14, when the auction will close. The list of artists include many names familiar to the Utah art community along with several first-timers to the auction. They include those whose works have been featured not only at UMOCA but also at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Ogden Contemporary Arts and many of the state’s other museums and major galleries. Those wishing to participate in the auction will notice QR codes assigned to each artwork in the show. The suggested opening bids have ranged from a few hundred dollars for some pieces to a good representation between $1,000 and $2,500 and several even higher, with starting bids above $4,000. The artworks range in size from miniatures to large paintings and represent a diverse spectrum of traditional and multimedia forms. To view and bid online, the works and information can be accessed here.
Featured artists include Andrew Alba, Trent Alvey, Henry Becker, Kellie Bornhoft, Collin Bradford, Ian Burnley, Maddison Colvin, Nic Courdy, Paul Crow, Daniel Everett, Peter Everett, Nolan Flynn, Jim Frazer, Daniel George, Josh Graham, Emily Hawkins, Robyn Hodess, Russell Huiskamp, Janell James, Brooklynn Johnson, Kathryn Knudsen, Lenka Konopasek, Beth Krensky, Jordan Layton, Christopher Lynn, Colour Maisch, Nick Pedersen, James Perkins, Alexis Rausch, Andrew Rice, Holly Rios, Jorge Rojas, Madeline Rupard, Mitsu Salmon, Laura Sharp-Wilson, Sallie Shatz, Nakita Shelley, Casey Jex Smith, Portia Snow, John Sproul, Jared Steffensen, Kaybria Swenson, James Talbot and Gary Vlasic.
For information about events, see the UMOCA website.
Thank you for showcasing our work at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.
It was a very positive experience working with UMOCA curator Jared Steffensen.