26 Oct Statewide Annual Exhibition
SWA 2022: Painting, Sculpture & Installation
Each year since 1899, the Utah Division of Arts and Museums puts on a juried Statewide Annual with rotating themes in a selected Utah venue. The three rotating themes are composed of varying mediums: Painting, Sculpture & Installation; Mixed Media & Works on Paper; and Craft, Photography, Video & Digital.
This year, Ogden Contemporary Arts was chosen to host the Statewide Annual, showcasing remarkable Painting, Sculpture and Installation pieces by Utah-based artists through January 9th, 2022. Since opening in 2020, OCA has established itself as a destination for regional artists to showcase their work and obtain support, empowerment and experience to add to the journey of their crafts. Hosting this exhibit encompasses the goals OCA strives to achieve and having the impressive creations of notable local artists on display in Ogden is an exciting development.
Each individual artist has a distinct style, bringing a unique experience to your walk through the exhibit. You’ll find colorful blurbed patterns traveling from tiles to cumulus-shaped sculptures; soft, moss-like fibers protruding around eyes on the walls; white chandelier raindrops dangling and dancing around you; paint mixed to perfected moody hues and turned into limbs and landscapes – and so much more.
Your visit to Ogden Contemporary Arts for the Statewide Annual supports local artists and organizations, maintains the longstanding tradition of celebrating artistic excellence in Utah set forth by the Utah Division of Arts and Museums, and allows you to dive into the immersive experience that Painting, Sculpture and Installation pieces have to offer.
Awards have been announced for Best in Show, Jurors’ Awards and Honorable Mentions, with the People’s Choice Award to be announced.
Best in Show | Stephanie Leitch
Jurors’ Awards | Cody Chamberlain, Rachel Henriksen, Laura Mason, Horacio Rodriguez, Nakita Shelley, and Rocio Vasquez Cisneros
Honorable Mentions | Ron Linn, Sara Luna
Writer: Angelika Brewer
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Visual arts competitions and exhibitions have been a project of the Utah Division of Arts & Museums (UA&M) since 1899. The Statewide Annual Exhibition (SWA) is an annual juried exhibition that presents a survey of current, outstanding visual arts work by Utah-based artists through three rotating themes: Painting, Sculpture & Installation, Mixed Media & Works on Paper, and Craft, Photography, Video & Digital.
ARTISTS
Adah Bennion, Cody Chamberlain, Rachel Henriksen, Christopher Kanyusik, Shasta Krueger, Cyan Larson, Stephanie Leitch, Ron Linn, Sara Luna, Zaida Machado, Laura Mason, Aimee Odum, Rebecca Pletsch, Alexis Rausch, Horacio Rodriguez, Nakita Shelley, Sam Stoddard, Douglas Tolman, Rocio Vasquez Cisneros, Laura Sharp Wilson.
2022 Jurors
YA LA’FORD, BRONX, NY
Ya La’Ford is an artist, educator, and foremost a transporter—working between the visual and the complexities of the human community with layered meanings—through a wide range of media including paint, sculpture, installation, video, and sound. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts from The Art Institute of Boston and also holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law.
As a first-generation American, she moves between her Jamaican heritage and vulnerable communities using the power of art as a universal language. Ya La’ford’s mission is centered on creating art and experiences, which exist to immeasurably transform and revolutionize the social, cultural, and historic contexts of creative expression within the human journey.
La’Ford’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Vinik Family Foundation. She has notably exhibited at the Tampa Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Fine Art, the Asia Contemporary Art Show, Venice Biennale Activation Projects, Yeelen Gallery, and John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.
Presently, she has scheduled solo shows through 2025, where Survey: The West, from her residency and exhibition at Ogden Contemporary Arts will travel to The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, Fall-Summer 2025. Amongst many other large scale public work notably the exterior elevation at St Petersburg History Museum and a police tribute monument.
Her work can be found as sculpture, installation, mural design, and exterior façades with a focus on the language of geometric design, symbols, and ethnography to recreate the connections of a space and the divine intervention paths that preserve our destinies as individuals and as a community.
ANNA VALDEZ, LOS ANGELES, CA
Anna Valdez is a multi-disciplinary artist who examines the relationship between objects, cultural formation, and collective consciousness. Creating epic tableaux in her studio, Valdez moves seamlessly between still life and landscape painting, collecting objects and making new ones, and cultivation, observation, and fictionalization.
Valdez received her MFA in painting from Boston University in 2013 and her BA in Anthropology and Art from University of California, Davis in 2009. Her work has been exhibited nationally at venues including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR; North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC; New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT; Cañada College in Redwood City, CA; Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco, CA and New York, NY; David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, CO; 1969 Gallery, Alexander Berggruen Gallery, and Nancy Margolis Gallery in New York, NY; and OCHI in Sun Valley, ID and Los Angeles, CA. Valdez’s work has been featured in publications including Juxtapoz Magazine, New American Paintings, Artsy, and Artillery Magazine. Her work is included in various public collections including Pérez Art Museum Miami in Miami, FL and the Phyllis & Ross Escalette Permanent Collection of Art at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
