13 Oct Exhibition: Anomalies – Suzanne Sbarge
November 7th, 2025 – January 11th, 2026
Ogden Contemporary Arts
Opening Reception: November 7th, 2026
Members Only Happy Hour from 4-6pm
Open to Public from 6-9pm
Anomalies is a solo exhibition by New Mexico-based artist Suzanne Sbarge, Ogden Contemporary Arts’ 2025 Artist-in-Residence. The exhibition features hybrid creatures within landscapes that reference Ogden and Utah and is inspired by the last 150 years of people settling on the edge of the harsh salty environment of the Great Salt Lake. Sbarge incorporates vintage photographs along with living, extinct, or imagined fauna and flora to explore how human existence is inseparable from nature, and to reflect on our delicate ecosystem.
Sbarge highlights fluidity and interconnection across humans, animals, genders, time, dimensions, and art mediums. She says, “In science, anomalies highlight errors, rare events, or entirely new phenomena. This exhibition looks at the animals of Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake through the lens of my imagination, where stories of loss and renewal play out in and around the shrinking, enclosed body of salt water in the high desert.”
For this new body of work, Sbarge has expanded her two-dimensional collage and painting practice to include three-dimensional printing, stop-motion animation, and cyanotypes, allowing her characters to take on new forms and gaze at the viewer and one another as if challenging reality, nature, and perception. Ever-present in her work are the dualities of familiarity and otherworldliness, interior and exterior, domesticity and freedom, sky and earth, real and imagined.
In tandem with Anomalies, Sbarge is presenting “Real/Surreal: Stories of Antelope Island,” a mobile art exhibition that presents works created in collaboration with student participants in OCA’s Artist Factory program. These works are featured on digital billboards throughout Ogden and Salt Lake City and as a full bus wrap on the exterior of one of Ogden’s city buses.
OCA would like to thank the following donors for supporting the organization’s general operation and programming, making this exhibition possible: Giv Communities, Weber County R.A.M.P., Utah Office of Tourism, George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, Dr. Ezekiel R. and Edna Wattis Dumke Foundation, Rocky Mountain Power Foundation, Utah Division of Arts and Museums, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Ogden City Arts.
Special thanks to Lamar Advertising, YESCO, Utah Transit Authority, and our community participants.
Learn more about Suzanne’s time in the OCA Artist In Residence Program.
About the Artist
Suzanne Sbarge has been a visual artist all her life. She was raised in Connecticut and has lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for 36 years. She holds a BA in Art History and Studio Arts from Barnard College and an MA in Art Education and Art Therapy from the University of New Mexico. She founded the contemporary art museum 516 ARTS in Albuquerque and worked as a nonprofit arts leader for close to 30 years while simultaneously maintaining her own art career. This residency has given her the unique opportunity to focus fully, work on a larger scale, and explore new mediums.
Schedule of Events:
Nov. 1 – Dec. 31, 2025 | Real / Surreal: Stories of Antelope Island: Bus wrap on an Ogden City bus and digital billboards in Ogden and Salt Lake City, created with students in OCA AIR artist-led workshops
Nov. 6, 2025, 6 p.m. | Lecture at Weber State University: Suzanne Sbarge artist lecture hosted by Weber State University
Nov. 7, 2025, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. | VIP Members Only Happy Hour: First look at exhibition, small bites and beverages will be served at OCA. Artist Suzanne Sbarge will be in attendance.
Nov. 7, 2025, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. | Public Opening: Artist Suzanne Sbarge will be in attendance
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
Thur – Sat, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sun, 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.