FEATURED ARTISTS

Coming Soon…

I am 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. 

As a member of a family that was constantly moving when I was growing up, my work mediates feelings of incompleteness due to relocation and how identity can become fragmented in this way. 

My interest in fabricated images stems from a place of love and sadness at the thought of forgetting. The marks I make are those of an individual who is desperate to jot down every memory before/as they forget it and the result is often messy and discombobulated. To fill in the cracks where memory fails me, I utilize fantasy. To do this, I mutate the image and/or idea of the grid and the quilt as a way to disrupt these motifs of time and narrative. I also employ chroma-key and paper mache in my video practice to visually alter narratives and create fantasy worlds. 

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 a memory would look like as an image and the fluidity that accompanies this imaginative act.

Holly Ann Jarvis is a wife, professional aerial coach and performer living in Northern Utah, USA. She is world-renowned as an aerial hammock/sling pioneer and since 2011 her work has influenced thousands of aerialists across the globe. Artistically, she studied contemporary art and received a BFA in 2D Media in 2012. Her own athletic background stems from a competitive, record-breaking swimming career. Her knowledge and experience as the Head Coach of a competitive youth swim team from 2008-2013 has enriched her teaching methods and unique coaching style within the aerial community. This blend of athleticism and artistry has created the foundation of her movement style and performance coaching that she utilizes to this day.

Holly is a full-time, working artist. Her talents extend beyond the aerial classroom with expansive knowledge in social media marketing, branding, graphic design, community outreach and event planning. She is a resident performer with numerous Salt Lake City-based production companies and travels internationally all year long to instruct high-demand workshops and trainings. She produces digital products including tutorial videos, online courses & recently authored & illustrated The Aerial Sling Coloring Book. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Weber State University & will be choreographing numerous productions for the Theatre department & the Department of Performing Arts over the course of the next year.

Beth Krensky is an artist, activist and educator. She is a professor of art teaching at the University of Utah. She received her formal art training from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts and MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and internationally. Her work is intended to provoke reflection about what is happening in our world as well as to create a vision of what is possible. She was recently selected as one of Utah’s 15 most influential artists by 15Bytes.

She is also a scholar in the area of youth-created art and social change. She holds an M.Ed. from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Educational Foundations from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her writing addresses community-based art education; youth activist art and art for social change.

She has received multiple teaching and research awards, including the University of Utah’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Public Service Professorship and Presidential Scholar Award.

Beth is a founding member of the Artnauts and joined the collective in 1996.

Lauren Lee McCarthy (she/they) is an LA-based artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She is the creator of p5.js, and Co-Director of the Processing Foundation. Lauren’s work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as The Barbican Centre, Ars Electronica, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der elektronischen Künste, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, Seoul Museum of Art. She has received numerous honors including a Creative Capital Award, Ars Electronica Golden Nica, Sundance Fellowship, Eyebeam Fellowship, and grants from the Knight Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Rhizome. Lauren is an Associate Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts.

Born in Morelos, Mexico, Jorge Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist, independent curator, and museum 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, as well as provoke public engagement, action, and creative collaboration. Rojas’s work and curatorial projects have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the U.S. and internationally, including Museo del Barrio, Queens Museum of Art, and White Box in New York; New World Museum and Project Row Houses in Houston; Ex Convento del Carmen, Guadalajara; FOFA Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal; Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and Woodbury Art Museum in Utah. Rojas is director of learning and engagement at the UMFA, where he oversees all education, community outreach, and adult programming initiatives for the Museum.