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A SPECIAL TWO PART PODCAST SERIES to kick-off Utah’s 125th statehood anniversary celebration coming up on January 04, 2021. Recording Dates: 06.18.2020 and 06.22.2020 (Speak Your Piece podcast, Season 2, Episode 3, parts 1 & 2). Above Photograph Caption: Matilda “Tillie” Houtz, posing as a Utah’s Statehood Queen with her shield stating “Union For Ever [sic],” 1896; George E. Anderson …
Artists and arts groups reinvent themselves as the economy stutters to reopen By Ellen Fagg Weist A musician performing on your sidewalk. Artists posting new works in their yards and radio DJs recording their shows at home, bird sounds included. Audiences and artists connected via computer screens. This is the state of Utah arts in 2020. This season, musicians, artists …
When UtahPresents shows were canceled in the spring, Executive Director Brooke Horejsi seized the opportunity. If an audience couldn’t be invited to Kingsbury Hall, she asked, could the space be used to help artists create new work? She invited arts companies to consider campus residencies. First up was Kinetic Light, a disability arts company “with physically fearless performers,” as Horejsi …
Most exhibitions at St. George’s Sears Art Museum are months in the planning, with artworks that are meticulously hung and arranged. But instead immediacy was the inspiration for “COVID-19 Pops-Up in Art,” an exhibition in the Dixie State University museum’s foyer, says Kathy Cieslewicz, museum curator. Anchoring the show were artist Stewart Seidman’s series of eight large acrylic paintings about …
Jeff Whiteley says he started to grieve when the Excellence in the Community concert series was forced to pause in late March — until the nonprofit’s founder hit upon a new plan. On April 16, even as Salt Lake County health restrictions tightened, the music series relaunched with weekly Wednesday and Saturday performances. The only thing missing was the in-person …
When Moab’s community radio station closed its building in mid-March, the station first turned to an automated system, which it usually relies on for overnight programming. After a week, KZMU volunteer DJs began taping their shows from home, complete with ambient sounds. Listeners heard familiar voices, and “you could hear the birds in the background, and you could hear the …
By the third reiteration — or was it the fourth? or fifth? — of a summer concert series in the COVID-19 era, the Holladay Arts Council decided to keep plans as simple, and as safe, as possible. The group planned four “Un”Common drive-in-style concerts. Cars served as portable social distancing bubbles, so plans didn’t have to change based on Salt Lake …
Using front yards as an outdoor art gallery, like a progressive dinner, was the aim of “Lawn Gnomes 2020,” a partnership between Ephraim’s Granary Arts and Salt Lake City Utah Museum of Contemporary Arts. While both arts galleries were closed, curators invited local artists to plant new works in their yards, and visitors were invited to follow a map to …
Utah’s state library shipped books for the blind all over the country during the pandemic By Ellen Fagg Weist | Photography by Todd Anderson On the phone, Ruth Levi, a 97-year-old reader from Chicago, admitted she was a little bit desperate. In the middle of the pandemic, the Midwestern warehouse of the National Library Services for the Blind and Print …
Masked protesters, proclaiming Black Lives Matter, became one of the dramatic images of summer 2020 across the country and also in Utah streets. After the COVID-19 shutdown paused the state’s art performances and closed museums, MUSE magazine sponsored a cultural conversation with artists discussing systemic racism. The panel, hosted by Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal, featured actor and singer Dee-Dee …
It’s all about the dough for two Utah potters during quarantine By Ellen Fagg Weist In hindsight, two Utah potters seemed particularly well-positioned to take advantage of the quarantine bread-baking trend. During the pandemic, Joe Bennion, who owns Spring City’s Horseshoe Mountain Pottery, has regularly sold out of his stock of sturdy bread baker pots. In July, one batch of …
