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.
One of this year’s demonstrating artists is Ethan Storrer, a Utah paleontologist who takes the STEAM approach by incorporating work into his scientific expertise to make paleontology and the natural world more accessible. Using fine-detail fossil preparation, sculpture, painting, wood/metal working, molding and casting, Storrer presents real fossil specimens and one-to-one scale replicas to bring the deep past to the public. From T. rex to mammoths, as he explains, we have hundreds of millions of years of evolution condensed in our collection.
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?
ES: I have always had a deep and powerful connection to the natural world and to Earth’s deep history. Our shared cultural heritage that can be found in deep time has long been my greatest inspiration. So when I was choosing a career, I never could look farther than paleontology! I often joke that I “never outgrew the dinosaur phase.” However once I became a paleontologist, I realized how inaccessible to some fossils and even replicas felt, how distant and detached from the past and the amazing creatures that came before us that many felt. So I sought to make it more accessible and to establish that connection spanning millions of years and the entire globe. Through my art, I express my appreciation and reverence for the incredible stories of animals long since extinct, and hope to share their stories with others.
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?
ES: I’ve been working in paleontology for over 16 years now, and have been a true paleontologist for nearly six of them. On top of the art forms of fossil preparation, replication, and forging steel armatures for skeletons (of which there is truly no greater inspiration than the absolutely legendary paleontologists and artists Pete Larson and Rick Hunter), I’ve also been inspired immensely by paleoart. That is, the art that serves as a snapshot into the distant past, depicting dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals in as scientifically informed reconstructions as possible and giving us the best idea of what they may have looked like and how they may have behaved. For my own paleoart, Fred Wierum and Mark Witton are my highest inspirations and I’m always attempting to breathe life into my animals the way they do theirs.
TUR: Do you work full-time exclusively as an artist? Or, how do you augment your work as an artist?
ES: While I remain a researching and active paleontologist full time, art is a critical part of the process! From the actual artistic side of fossil excavation and preparation to get the fossil ready for research, to illustrating diagrams and skeletals in peer reviewed publications, to scientifically informed life reconstructions of extinct animals, paleontology truly is the perfect blend between art and science. I couldn’t do my job nearly as well if I wasn’t an artist.
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?
ES: Often my art stagnates as my work does. If we’ve made an exciting discovery in the field, I’m keen to unveil it to the public and illustrate this new find. I love exploring the possibilities of these new discoveries by creating art. However, this is an ebb and flow, not every fossil reveals astounding new information, and my inspiration falters with that. Alongside inspiration, my work is very physically demanding. Fossils are heavy and welding/bending steel armatures is tough work, it’s important to stay in shape!
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?
ES: I am immensely excited, I’ve been hoping to be a part of Arts Fest for the past five years, and I can’t believe I finally have the opportunity! I’ve been a vendor at Park Silly Sundays, the Salt Lake Downtown Farmer’s Market, the Craft Lake City DIY Fest, and Snowbird’s Oktoberfest. All of these markets brought such distinct flavors and experiences, and I’m sure Arts Fest will only heighten that! I only hope I can offer something completely distinct and unique in return!
