EDITOR’S NOTE: For preview coverage of the 50th Utah Arts Festival, which runs June 18-21, The Utah Review is presenting individual or group profiles of artists, performers, entertainers and some newcomers to the event. The curtain raiser highlights the history of the Festival which is marking its golden anniversary. BANDALOOP, among the most prominent pioneers of vertical dance, returns to UAF for the fourth time, having appeared in 2005. 2013 and 2018. Once again, the Oakland-based arts company will perform on the 240-foot-high curving glass façade of the City Library, as part of a June tour in four cities featuring a work with ecological roots that will resonate with collective concerns about the Great Salt Lake’s ecological crisis, as the dance artists perform FLOCK while integrating company repertoire pieces including Downstream and its new creation, life || lines, all with an original score featuring music by four composers. Salt Lake Acting Company will appear for the second time at the festival, offering a sample from its upcoming summer show, The Gaslight Zone. Make-and-take opportunities will be among the most extensive in history, with Make Salt Lake as well as Secondhand Salamander which is bringing back the classic Mad Hatter project, and, of course, the Kids’ Art Yard. Urban Arts is offering its largest live graffiti mural installation featuring eight artists in four Festival campus locations, while a row of several other artists will be demonstrating their creative process in real time. Holdman Studios, based in Lehi with an international portfolio of commissions to create stained glass in religious and civic buildings, including a recent update to the Utah State Capitol rotunda, is offering an unprecedented series of free workshops for participants to create their own stained glass artwork. The City Library auditorium will be the home to the 23rd edition of the international Fear No Film program, with 84 short films on a slate of 15 programs, the second largest in the event’s history. Of course, dance, who wears the empress jewels in performing arts, will be represented by Repertory Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Sock Opera Dance, and, of course, the ever-popular 1520 Arts, which will feature Trash Panda Drum Group and competitions featuring Sol Tribe as part of the Salt Open Styles Battle along with the Red Bull Dance Your Style battle and a collaboration with Utah Valley University’s ESPRIT in Rep Your Set Choreo Competition, with choreographers who specialize variously in hip hop, contemporary, salsa, reggaeton, afro, popping. Headliners this year include Digable Planets, well known among jazz musicians as well as hip hop artists (June 18); Yola, six-time Grammy-nominated artist, songwriter, and actor (June 19); Austin-based musician Alejandro Rose-Garcia, better known as Shakey Graves, who has been cited for creating new musical experiences tailored to each fan, ranging from Bandcamp-exclusive releases to hosting interactive scavenger hunts while on tour (June 20) and Rubblebucket, a band well known for its hybrid genre blend of psychedelia and electronic dance music (June 21). For tickets and more information, see the Utah Arts Festival website.
AMANDA KROLCZYK
Among the artists making their first appearance in the Utah Arts Festival’s Artist Marketplace is Amanda Krolczyk, a sculptor who lives in Missoula, Montana and works in Plaid Beaver Company. A sculptor who also is a ceramics artist, she finds, recycles and refashions wood into landscape and skylines portraying the American West and from around the world.
TUR: How have you used art media forms in helping to create an holistic body of artistic work that searches for a more complete expression of your own innermost and most powerful states of emotion, inspiration, contemplation, and self-identity?
AK: I am currently creating work using reclaimed construction waste in the form of wood and wood-firing my ceramic works. I find the tie between the two is the wood and the free formed, unpredictable, tight but loose surfaces that I get with both. I connect to both in different ways. Ceramics will always be my first love, it’s where I find community and belonging and exploration that no other art form gives me. While woodworking feels like coming home. I am self taught as a woodworker, but there is some kind of inner knowing working with wood. I have created my wood sculptures as a place to keep memories, a house to hold pieces of your heart. Reliquaries for pilgrims to bring a bit of the grandeur they experienced in the wilds back into their homes. A remembrance of something much larger than yourself.
My ceramic work right now is very functional everyday pieces that I want to have people use and not feel bad about breaking. I want them to hold the spirit of the trees and the firings so that you get to touch a bit of wildness every time you use them but not be so precious that they sit on a shelf and never get used. Through both bodies of work there is the desire for connection. I want people to experience the connection and interaction with wildness, unpredictability, untamable wilderness and true imperfect beauty.
TUR: What is your training as an artist? Who do you consider your most significant influences and inspirations? Do these influences shift as you progress both in your work and life?
AK: I have a BFA in Ceramics from the University of Montana and I would consider my significant influences in my art education to be Beth Lo, Trey Hill, Brad Allen, and Steve Krutek. The longer I have been out of school the more that has shifted. I have always been very inspired by the work of Debora Butterfield, Josh DeWeese, Sunshine Cobb, Courtney Murphy and Courtney Blazon.
TUR: Do you work full-time exclusively as an artist? Or, how do you augment your work as an artist?
AK: I am a full-time working artist, but as a parent can you really be full time anything? I am a full time artist, care taker, mother, lover, friend and community member. I don’t feel like it’s fair to unravel those because they make up the tapestry of me and pull one thread in me and all of it could unravel, and then there would be none at all.
TUR: Do you find it easy or difficult to start new work? And, typically, how do you prepare yourself to handle both the creative and physical demands of creating your art?
AK: I find it very difficult to start new commission pieces. I put a lot of pressure on myself for them to be perfect rather than leaning into the process and enjoying what happens along the way.
TUR: With regard to participating in the Utah Arts Festival, please share your feelings about being a part of this enterprise? Have you been in other festivals and do you plan to explore other festival venues?
AK: I am very excited to come down to Salt Lake with my work for the first time. This will be a really cool show to be a part of. This summer looks very different for me. I am usually at a show every weekend or every other but am focusing on the family and my commission this summer to keep me working.
