Utah Arts Festival 2016

The day after I flew back home to Salt Lake City from my Dallas/D.C. adventures, we went to the 40th Annual Utah Arts Festival.  We've made an effort to go every year since we moved to Salt Lake and this year was just as fun and inspiring as the previous years!  This year, it was interesting to recognize artist that seem to be there every single year we've gone, but it was so, so fun to see artists and work we've never seen before!  I want to share five of my favorite artists from the festival, but there were so many great artists there!

One of the artists that I didn't know about before was Johanna Mueller.  As soon as I saw her work, I was instantly in love with it!  She creates relief engravings, monoprints, illustrations, and paintings that tell stories through the depiction of animals.  The photo below is taken from her website and it was my favorite piece of hers at the festival.  This work is titled "Beneath the Land".

The second artist that I want to share is Aaron Fritz.  Aaron's paintings are full of rich color and movement.  Although there aren't any photos of his abstract nudes on his website, which are the pieces I really loved, there is still a lot of great work that give the sense of Aaron's style.  The piece below is titled "Fourth of July" and this photo was taken from his website.

Kevin Zuckerman is one of my favorite artists and I discovered him at the Utah Arts Festival in 2012, when we bought a painting from him that now hangs in my daughter's room.  I hadn't seen him at the festival since then, so I was thrilled to see him this year!  Kevin is an amazing artist who has mastered several mediums including oil paint, sculpture in bronze, and watercolor.  He has also traveled about Europe studying the masters, which informs the work he does now.  This painting, "Red Feather" is similar to the one we purchased four years ago.  This photo is taken from his website.

Leslie Duke is another new-to-me artist.  I love her artist statement, and I think it says it all.

"As an artist I am continually fascinated with color, particularly with its ability to prompt an emotional response from its audience. My work explores color’s emotive capacity, focussing more on the overall atmosphere created by the color palette of each piece, rather than the actual subject matter depicted. This approach is meant to create a unique visual experience, one that facilitates an inner dialogue by quietly probing the subconscious."

This photo of this painting, "Summer Blues", is taken from her website.

The last work I want to share with you is by a husband-wife team, Steve and Bonnie Harmston, under the name HarmstonArts.  They are fine art printmakers, and I just know I've seen their work before.  This duo has a beautiful biography on their website about working together and keeping the process of their hand pulled serigraphs as simple and technology free as possible.  I love that they only made small editions.  As a collector, I always look for that in prints!  This photo below, taken from their website, is of one of my favorite works, "The Color Farm".