About
Utah Sites: Performance Art in Utah Landscapes, curated by Kristina Lenzi, brings together the work of fifteen performance artists whose work reflects a reverence for Utah sites and landscapes. All artworks included in this exhibition are performed for video for the first time in these pieces.
Participating Artists
Alexandra Barbier Alexandra Barbier is a dance artist, educator, and performance maker who holds a BA in French and Women’s + Gender Studies and an MFA in Modern Dance. Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah in 2017. Since then, she has received funding and project support from the B.W. Bastian Foundation and the Salt Lake City Arts Council, has presented her work through various local platforms (including 12 Minutes Max, the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival, and the Salt Lake Performance Art Festival), and choreographed/directed Deseret Experimental Opera’s 2021 operetta Hundred Years Hence. She is a co-organizer of Queer Spectra Arts Festival (for whom she gave the keynote speech in 2019) and was invited to contribute to an audio tour for the Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibit Black Refractions: Highlights from the Studio Museum of Harlem. She has recently served as the Dance History instructor for the Joffrey Ballet and Jazz + Contemporary trainee programs and is excited to spend the next two years as the Raymond C. Morales Fellow in the University of Utah's School of Dance.
Jeffery Byrd is a performance artist who has worn weird outfits all over the world.
Chelsea Coon is an artist and writer whose work focuses on the shifting interconnections of the body, time, and space. She utilises endurance to reconsider limits of the body primarily through performance as well as installation, sculpture, painting, photography, video, and text. She has exhibited internationally in festivals, biennales, and galleries in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She received her BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (2012), MFA at Tufts University (2014), and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Theatre, Performance and Contemporary Live Arts at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Scuola Teatro Dimitri, Switzerland (2015). Recent writings included Rated RX: Sheree Rose with and after Bob Flanagan (Ohio State University Press, 2020); and The Phenomenology of Bloody Performance Art! (Routledge, under contract). Coon is the recipient of the Yousuf Karsh Prize in Photography, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship. Coon is a PhD candidate in practice-led research at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.
Steve Creson is a multimedia visual artist, writer, photographer, filmmaker and performance artist. He studied poetry and book arts at Naropa Institute (1986-88) Boulder, CO and received a BS in Typography & Design, Rochester Institute of Technology (1993) Rochester, NY. He lives in SLC but has shown work and performed in both the United States & Europe.
He started painting, in earnest, in 1989 while studying Typography and Design at Rochester Institute of Technology. Then set painting aside in the late 90’s for still photography and 16mm experimental film. During those Seattle years, 1993—2003, he published the poetry zine Anatomy: Raw, Co-founded the Seattle Underground Film Festival (SUFF) and programed film shows around the city, from bars to small theaters. Finally having his own storefront theater, Cinema 18, living in the back of the house, screening films and hosting, in part, the film festival.
In November 2020 Elik Press, SLC, published his book Big Day / New and Selected Poems. Available at Weller Book Works, Trolley Square, SLC, and Elik Press.com. It is a selection of previously published and unpublished poems, with afterward by the writer and Beat scholar Jim Jones.
Lisa DeFrance Born in rural Montana, Lisa DeFrance resides in SLC, UT with her husband, Steve Creson, and their daughter Fern. She began experimenting with sound and performance in the 1990’s while living, working, and exploring in Seattle. Lisa holds a BS from Oregon State University in Apparel Design (1990) and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Westminster College (2010). Currently she teaches 4th grade and spends time in her studio (Bogue Foundry) collaborating on art, design, and performance. The work of Andy Goldsworthy, James Turrell, Marilyn Arsem, as well as many locally-based artists continue to be a steady source of inspiration and influence. When performing, Lisa strives to act on impulses that come from the moment. Ideas that have been visited previously in thought are set aside in service of the direct action with found or curated materials within the performance space. Willa Cather’s character from The Song of the Lark, Thea Kronberg captures the process when she says, ““You can learn the delivery of a part only before an audience”"
Sam Forlenza A native of Newark, NJ, Sam moved from northern New Jersey to Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2015. He is a multimedia artist, and a retired clinical psychologist. He has an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Rutgers University, has pursued graduate work in studio art in addition to his clinical doctorate.
Sam has completed the Certificate in Book Arts program at the University of Utah and has studied performance art with internationally known performance artist, Marilyn Arsem. He enjoys teaching and has conducted arts workshops and demonstrations, from middle school to older adults.
In early 2020, he had an exhibit of 30 artworks, entitled, A Conversation with Unexpected Friends, at the main branch of Salt Lake City Public Library. At the beginning of April 2021, Sam was part of the 8th Annual Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival. He created nine large (22” x 30”) drawing in 50 minutes, in a work entitled, At the Creation, a tribute to Automatism in art.
He has exhibited at various NJ venues including the Newark Museum of Art, and in New York State. In 2021, Sam’s artist’s book, Three Windows, was acquired by Boise State University, Idaho.
Winston Inoway is a native of Salt Lake City and works as a program manager for the Utah Department of Transportation. He has a background in graphic design, photography, and instructional design.
Shasta Lawton holds a BFA in photography and mixed-media from Utah State University. She has studied performance art with Marilyn Arsem. Shasta has performed in the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival in recent years. Lawton’s work is politically charged and intensely focused on domesticity and women’s work.
Kristina Lenzi Kristina Lenzi was born in Salt Lake City and received her BFA at the University of Utah with an emphasis in drawing and painting. She lived five years in Boston where she received a MFA at Tufts University in affiliation with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in interdisciplinary art, including performance art, drawing and painting. Lenzi has performed and exhibited throughout the USA and in Europe. Kristina has taught at the University of Utah, Weber State University and Westminster College as an Adjunct Professor. Kristina also works as a volunteer, art-mentoring a twenty-year-old man, Bryton, with severe, nonconversational autism. Additionally, she works in a special education classroom as a paraprofessional at Hillcrest High School. Kristina Lenzi is the founder and curator of the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival, which is in its ninth year. Recently, Lenzi was accepted as the curator for Utah Sites; Performance Art for Video in the Utah Landscape in affiliation with the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. Utah Sites is presented digitally in August, 2021. Currently, Kristina lives and works from her studio in Midvale, Utah with her fifteen-year-old Australian Shepherd.
Dawn Oughton holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in art education with a minor in art history. Since 2015, she has studied performance art with Marilyn Arsem. Oughton is passionate about performance art.
Gretchen Reynolds is a puppeteer, painter, and performance artist.
Paul Reynolds is a painter and performance artist, living in Salt Lake City. He studied art at the University of California and at the University of Utah, graduating in 1976. Paul lived in the Pacific Northwest for a decade, where he attempted to do his artwork by kerosene lamplight, and eventually moved to Seattle with power and set up a black and white darkroom. He has exhibited his work since 1980, working in succession as a printmaker, a photographer, a drawer and as a painter and occasional performance artist. He has shown his work in group shows and solo shows in the US, and is represented by Modern West Fine Art in Salt Lake City. He also currently works as a Librarian and arts presenter at the Salt Lake City Public Library.
Jorge Rojas Born in Morelos, Mexico, Jorge Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist, independent curator, and educator. He studied Art at the University of Utah and at Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Rojas creates performances, videos, paintings, sculpture and installations. His primary output for the last twelve years has been performance art, which interests Rojas in its ability to bring people together, provoke public engagement, action, and creative collaboration. Rojas's interests include spiritual histories, interpretations of ancient rites and customs, institutional critique, and responding to abuses of power. In recent years, his performance work has focused primarily on drawing attention to and denouncing political injustice and racial tensions in the U.S. Rojas’s work and curatorial projects have been exhibited widely across the U.S. and internationally. His work can be found in numerous private and public collections. From 2015 to 2021, Rojas was director of learning and engagement at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, where he oversaw education, community outreach, and adult programming initiatives for the Museum. Rojas is actively involved in the Salt Lake community as an artist, educator, curator, and is a passionate advocate for advancing racial and cultural justice through the arts.
Eugene Tachinni was born in Shiprock, New Mexico and grew up in Kirtland, New Mexico, a bordertown next to the Navajo reservation. He has a BFA, MAT, and MFA from the University of Utah. He teaches art and sewing classes at Weber State University and Salt Lake Community College. Eugene also works from home making art and constructing custom made garments. He is a son, brother, uncle, artist, and educator.
Emmett Wilson Emmett is a fluid being making low-and-high-key psychological and site specific play scenarios infused with dance; sometimes solo, often with others. They were born and raised in Houston where they did a lot of learning at the Houston Metropolitan Dance Center, then they moved to Salt Lake City to attend the University of Utah, majoring in modern dance and working as the compost steward at the Edible Campus Gardens. Emmett stayed in Salt Lake after graduating and cultivated the City Library’s first community garden and seed library. Emmett now lives in Philadelphia where they are an alumni of Headlong Dance Theater’s Performance Institute. They get a lot of emails from various places they’ve lived and performed themselves in that are addressed to different names and titles that they have and haven’t gone by. You can find them picking up snail mail and connecting with community they found in Baltimore while living there in between SLC and Philly during the winter of our discontent. They aim to keep moving and orienting collectively through sources of disorientation.