In fall 2020 semester, University of Utah Department of Art & Art History Professor Al Denyer was awarded a Collections Engagement Grant to work on a group project with MFA students from her Graduate Critique class. These awards are part of “Landscape, Land Art and the American West,” a joint research and engagement initiative between the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Marriott Library supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and matching funds from the University. Denyer and her students conducted research using material from the UMFA and Marriott Library Special Collections, to explore what “A Sense of Place” means in historical and individual contexts.
Through research in library archives, museum collections, and in our their artmaking studios, they examined how artists from the past portrayed and created their identities in reaction to their environment and contributed to a contemporary artistic and cultural inheritance. An internal awareness of the struggle and vulnerability it takes to share our relationship to the west has led to the creation of works exploring these boundaries. The works that have emerged from this examination ask viewers to reevaluate their own connections to eroding narratives embedded in Place, and identify with a sense of belonging.
Featured Artists: Tess Wood, Eric Robertson, Christina Riccio, Holly Nielsen, Bryce Billings, Candace von Hoffman, Reilly Jensen, Hannah Nielsen, & Al Denyer