Artist Bios
Andrew Alba is a self-taught artist and descendant of Mexican migrant workers, Alba's large scale paintings and drawings evoke an emotional response while still maintaining relevant commentary on contemporary politics and society. Alba recently finished an Artist-In-Residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and is currently the artist in residence at Modern West Fine Art. Alba has exhibited work throughout the Pacific Northwest and Salt Lake City where he was born, raised and currently resides.
Paige Anderson’s objective as an artist is to give viewers an individual and personalized experience with the sublime. She chooses abstract art as a way to hopefully broaden the scope of her potential audience. Geometric abstractions and patterns, in particular, are intended to give her pieces definition and framework, without making them narrow and definitive.
Alec Bang is a working artist and designer descended from Northern-European immigrants; living and working on Ute, Paiute, Goshute, Western Shoshone, and other stolen lands of the Southwest and surrounding areas. This connection and disconnection from heritage and place have deeply affected his work and life path as he creates work that attempts to bring attention to personal and interpersonal connections to land and place.
Linnie Brown creates layered artworks with collage, paint, printmaking, and drawing that reference on-going human activity within geographical spaces. Ms. Brown grew up in the suburbs of Portland, OR, and studied painting at Brigham Young University. She went on to receive her MFA degree from the University of Utah. She currently works from her studio in Lehi, Utah, teaches part-time at Brigham Young University, and is represented by A Gallery in Salt Lake City.
Suzanne Bybee is an artist who has relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah after residing in Washington, D.C. for the past twelve years. She received her Master of Fine Arts Painting from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA in 2000. She has shown primarily in Los Angeles, California, and Seattle, Washington; more recently she has participated in group and pop-up exhibitions in the greater Washington, D.C. metro area. Currently, she is participating in collaborations and curatorial projects with other artists, writing and reviewing artists’ work, and creating art in the analog and digital realms. Vacillating between different settings and surfaces, her work searches for new information through a visual dialogue between telematics and the physical/tangible realms of art-making.
Virginia Catherall was born in Southern California but grew up in Utah. She is a museum educator as well as a textile artist, knitter, and knitwear designer. Virginia has been Curator of Education at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts since 1994. Virginia received her BA in Art History from Brigham Young University and an MA in Museum Education from John F. Kennedy University in California. In 2004, she received an MPh in Educational Philosophy from the University of Utah. In 2015, Virginia was an artist-in-residence of Black Rock Desert/High Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada.
Al Denyer is an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing, and Head of Painting and Drawing in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Utah. Denyer is originally from Bath, England. Her work encompasses the areas of drawing, painting, printmaking, and installation. Shown in solo and numerous national and international juried and invitational exhibitions. In 2010 she was awarded the Visual Arts Fellowship Award from the Utah Division of Arts & Museums. Her work is part of numerous international collections and she is represented by Modern West Fine Art.
Eric Fairclough was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He currently lives downtown in his dream neighborhood right across from liberty park, with his husband and their dog Murray, and cat Arthur. He is a self-taught artist, who has been working within the local art community here in SLC for the last 8 years. He has worked hard to develop a very unique style and voice here in Utah, and over the last 5 years, his process has become more and more his own.
Izzy Fernandez is an interdisciplinary artist who makes work about the fragmented and artificial nature of memory and identity. In my practice, I combine sewing, painting, paper mache and video to present reconfigured narratives in a tactile way. Through my attempts to visually recreate memories, I’ve found that remembering the past is an exercise in imagination more than anything having to do with reality. That being said, memory and nostalgia are not futile devices, but rather, infinite exercises in world-building. Ultimately, my work seeks to communicate what memory would look like as an image and the fluidity that accompanies this imaginative act.
Joshua Graham is a Salt Lake City-based artist and educator. He is currently an adjunct professor of art education at the University of Utah, where he teaches in both the College of Fine Art as well as the College of Undergraduate Studies. Josh received his formal art training from the Arts Students League of New York, Brigham Young University, and most recently, the University of Utah, where he received his master’s degree in fine art and community-based art education. Josh has been shown throughout the United States and internationally. Artist-in-Residence programs remain central to his practice, taking him into national parks, contemporary art museums, and ancient castles. His post-studio practice is a direct result of over 10 years of experience working with high school students at the Walden School of Liberal Arts, a Title 1 public school in Provo, UT. It was at Walden, amongst a small, dedicated, community of teachers and students, where Josh developed his teaching and artistic philosophy – the notion that every human retains the possibility to realize their artistic potential, becoming an active participant in shaping and redefining their world.
Christopher Kanyusik was born in Minnesota, received his BFA in Ceramics from The University of Montana, his Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Sculpture from Brandeis University, his MFA in Ceramic Sculpture from The Rochester Institute of Technology, and an MFA in Sculpture from the Academy of Art University.
Jason Lanegan was born and raised in Washington State and was involved in drawing and other creative outlets from his earliest memories. With eyes set upon being a high school art teacher, Jason first attended BYU-Idaho where he obtained an associate degree in the visual arts. He went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in sculpture from Northern Arizona University and then a bachelor’s in art education from Eastern Washington University. After turning down a long sought after offer for a high school teaching position, Jason went on to acquire a graduate degree in sculpture with a minor in art history from BYU. Upon completing his education he used his experience in various capacities including, head sculptor for Paleoforms, director of the Morris Fine Art Gallery, and sculpture professor as well as museum director at Northern Arizona University. Jason currently lives with his wife, Kimberly, and five children in Spanish Fork, Utah, and works as the Gallery Director for the Departments of Art and Design at BYU.
Colour Maisch understands the world in two ways: through her head and through her gut. While both modes have their place, she is drawn to the lush, animal nature of the gut. From this vantage point, she is free to make connections and construct narratives that seemingly have little rhyme or reason, yet touch on something that is familiar and collective. This approach to art-making results in still lifes of lived moments. Nylon stockings combined with porcelain and dried grasses are about the characteristics of the materials themselves as well as their ability, when combined, to suggest the connection between ambiguity, contradiction, and human experience. For instance, she uses porcelain that has perceived value, with another material, such as inexpensive hosiery, that has a very different, if not opposite perceived value intentionally. They speak to the murky and unpretentious alchemical language of the body. The gut does not sort and categorize; the beautiful stews with the ugly, the valuable stews with the cheap, and in the end the result is something like a poem that makes perfect sense in a perfectly, nonsensical way.
Carlos Matamoros Maldonado was born in San Salvador, El Salvador. He studied at the National Art Center and at the Academy of Visual Arts in his native country. Matamoros has exhibited in numerous galleries, both in individual and collective exhibitions in El Salvador and in the United States. He has also received several awards, including for projects sponsored by the Ministry of Labor and Education of El Salvador, as well as a third-place award for artwork submitted to the International Family Association in New York. Commenting on his work, he says, “Family has always been a theme of inspiration for me. I don’t always paint what I see, but what I feel, documenting a story for others to read.”
Amelia O'Neill grew up in California, received her BA in Studio Art from Brigham Young University, and is currently working on her MFA from there as well. Drawing from dreams and memory she creates unexpected meaning out of simple vignettes.
Lisa Orr discovered her love and talent for art while in her first year of college. Quickly she shifted her focus towards the arts. After receiving a bachelor's degree in fine art from the University of California, Los Angeles, Lisa continued to create and define her voice as an artist. She worked at Bonhams Los Angeles auction house and a fine art gallery in West Hollywood where she immersed herself in the LA art scene and was continuously introduced and inspired by other artist’s work. Her interests expanded to design and she went back to school for a degree in Interior Design. After completing design school she began working as a sole proprietor in Interior Design while continuing to create her art. For Lisa, expressing herself creatively is essential to experiencing and enjoying her life. Lisa believes art is an important aspect to the community and has served multiple years on the Friends of Contemporary Art (FOCA) Executive Committee for the Utah Museum of Fine Arts to help promote contemporary art within the community, build membership, and research acquisitions for the museum to purchase.
Joseph Ostraff is a three-time recipient of the prestigious Fellowship Award from the Utah Division of Arts & Museums and was voted one of Utah's 15 most influential artists by a panel of his peers in 2019. Ostraff was born in Santa Monica, California in 1957, later earning an MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1984, and is now a professor at Brigham Young University. The collaborative efforts he's organized have involved hundreds of artists around the globe and have culminated in more than 30 exhibitions both domestically and abroad.
Lis Pardoe lives, works, and teaches in Salt Lake City, Utah. She grew up along the Wasatch Front, fostering her creativity through various forms. It wasn't until high school that she discovered her passion for painting and drawing. With an interest in psychology, the outdoors, and the human figure, Pardoe sought out a way to realistically portray these in her work. In 2010, she was awarded a summer scholarship to begin a rigorous apprenticeship at the Hein Atelier of Traditional Art, which she graduated in 2015. Pardoe won the Springville Museum of Art’s “Artist’s Choice Award” (2016), was featured in Buzzfeed’s “What Art Collectors Are Shopping For” (2017), and was a finalist in the 14th International ARC Salon (2019). She currently is represented by Meyer Gallery in Park City, UT.
Wren Ross is a work-on-paper artist whose dreamlike and sometimes bizarre narratives inhabit a space that is both severe and sensitive. With a personal practice centered on empathetic engagement and intuitive mark-making, her body of work is firstly concerned with the ritual of noticing, and celebrates the mundane, the simple and the overlooked. Born and raised in Utah, Wren graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. Influenced by myth, allegory and the mark-making traditions of prehistoric peoples, her work seeks to create a space for introspection and dialogue in an ever-shifting political, social and environmental climate. Wren's work includes traditional materials, namely water-based drawing and painting tools, as well as materials found in the natural world, such as herbs, minerals, earth, and salt.
Jill Smith is a U.S. artist that has been living and working as an artist internationally for the past 15 years. Her experience gained while living in Egypt, Zimbabwe, Guatemala, and now in Salt Lake City, UT have given her unique opportunities and insights that have greatly impacted and enriched her artwork and career as a studio artist. She exhibits her work internationally on three continents, including at The National Gallery of Zimbabwe. She has given lectures, taught workshops, and demonstrated her art as a visiting artist to a variety of schools and organizations with a special interest in underprivileged and disabled artists.
Annette Summers is a painter living in rural Northern Utah. She recently graduated from Utah State University with a BFA in drawing and painting. She studied in Germany during the summer semester (2018). Her work was included in several USU exhibitions including the Annual Undergraduate Show (2017). Annette’s oil paintings explore the human experience with its accompanying emotions. She addresses both the pleasant and the appalling. Annette maintains a studio practice in Clarkston, Utah.
Claire Taylor is a freelance artist, illustrator, and art teacher based in Salt Lake City, UT. She is currently an artist in residence at the Natural History Museum of Utah. She was formerly an artist in residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and has held teaching-artist residencies through the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. Her work has been commissioned by Utah-based organizations including the Salt Lake City Public Library, Ken Sanders Rare Books, Back of Beyond Books, the Sustainability Office at the University of Utah and Torrey House Press. She formerly worked as the Studio Manager, Instructor and Lead Printer at the Book Arts Program & Red Butte Press at the University of Utah. She holds a Master of Science in Environmental Humanities and a Bachelor of Fine Art with a printmaking emphasis from the University of Utah.
Douglas Tolman is an interdisciplinary artist primarily working in rural Utah. They believe a sense of place and connection to community are the strongest tools we have for fixing the many socio-ecological problems in the Mountain West. As an artist, educator, pioneer-descendent, and visitor on stolen land, they hope to help others connect with ecology & community by uncovering centuries of "economic development" which hinder that connection.
Amber Tutwiler is an artist originally from South Florida. Her work is a meditation on interface; specifically, it is concerned with the interface between our physical, corporeal world and the heterotopic spaces arising from the world. Elaborating on the relationships between the body, interface, and locality, her work is rooted in phenomenological encounters. Focusing on an interdisciplinary practice, she works across oil painting, sculpture and installation, audio, video, and performance. She attended Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts for Dance and Visual Arts, Massachusetts College of Art and Design for Painting, Florida Atlantic University for Psychology (BA in Psychology), and received her MFA in Visual Art from Florida Atlantic University (2017). She is currently a Lecturer at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah teaching across foundations, painting, and drawing.
Gary Vlasic is a performer, artist, event planner, and designer. He brings a diverse background of mediums together to create visual experiences. These encompass large scale events, interior design, art direction, performance, site-specific design, and image-making.
Annie Watkins grew up in the forest and has spent half of her life in the desert. She has studied at colleges and art centers in Utah, Idaho, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois, Greece, and Italy. Annie is most happy in the company of insects and rocks.
Justin Wheatley was born and raised in Clinton, Utah. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Utah State University with an emphasis in drawing and painting, and a Masters of Arts from National University, with a specialization in National Board Leadership. His work is influenced by his love for nature and architecture. Justin currently resides in Salt Lake City with his wife and four daughters.