last friday night, we went to the opening of The Face of Utah Sculpture exhibition Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City. A variety of work with some truly good stuff in the mix. Here is a sampling of things i liked, as well as a couple i found, well, interesting.

spheres (i didn’t note the name) by Chris Coleman

Cradle of Life and Death by Shawn Porter

Custom Continental by B. Clark

Dream by Sylvia Davis
beautiful tones in the patina on this one

Fetal by Mark Degraffenried

Flame by Ryoichi Suzuki
i wish i could have had better light for this. The patina was fabulous. It looked like stone.

Gratitude by K. Miduch

Haute Coutre Torture by J. Lucius

Hybrid Seed by N. Johannsen

Jack Knife by D. Holz

La jeune Femme by J. Young

Michelle (something) by Dan Gerhart

Penguin by U. Brodauf

Gypsy Woman by P. Pobil

Recombinant Michelle by Dan Gerhart

The Standard Works by B. Fairbanks
Moses, St Peter, Nephi and Joseph Smith, Jr

Tree People by Greg Raglan
This is so beautiful in person.
The forms carry a real sense of the organic.
they turn their heads up to the sky,
their lips pursed,
waiting to kiss

The Better Man / Wrong End of a 45 by S. Rogers
some of the best western sculpture i’ve seen

If you happen to be in Utah before Aug. 24, 2006, try to check it out.

SOP’s flying guy

more pictures available in my “flying objects” flickr set (see link in the left-hand side-bar).

i haven’t been posting. Why? Well…

1. i’ve been training for this
2. which made me buy this*.
3. so icould listen to more of this**, this*** and this when running over 2 hours.
4. then i found this to help me plan and track my runs, and more hours were lost
5. but i have also been doing a bit of this:


yes, they really are that orange

6. and sop has been doing plenty of this:



7. and i even did a little of this:

* not sure how i feel about this, actually. So very ‘branded’. But, it can serve as a memory stick as well, and that is always a bonus. I don’t want to rely on it – I doubt i’ll use it for runs less than 12 miles or so, but i also hope i use it enough to justify spending any money at all on it.
**we went to see Zachary Ross and Barclay Martin at a friend’s house (well, at the house of a friend of a friend, actually) last friday night. Very enjoyable live. Listen to a couple tunes and see what you think…
*** Guster is one of my favorite bands – live or otherwise (by that i mean recorded, not dead).

at least sop is making progress…

for the past few months, our lives have been dominated by flying objects.

SOP was one of the artists chosen to produce a sculpture along the theme of flying objects. Rather than try to tell you about his piece,

let me show you the maquette:

the final sculpture is 9 ft x 9 ft and will be on a 14 ft pole. We’ve fiberglassed the body (please let me know if you are interested in seeing pictures of that process) and sop has now shaped the engine cowls:

think he is happy about this?

the cowls are steel, with brass tips. They will be chromed, as will the front cones for the propellors:

not for traffic

It’s been a long process, much more for sop than for me of course. Although i helped him with the fiberglass (and was dehydrated for a week from the chemicals), mostly it has been just him – pretty well every evening and weekend.

Can’t wait for this to be done. There are 12 sculptures total (3 others from people we know well) and some very cool ideas. The sculptures will be placed at various locations throughout salt lake city for 2 years. I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures at the unveiling. I’m getting pretty excited.