Chalk it up to impertinent youthful exuberance. After all, it was exciting to see his father’s business grow into Salt Lake City’s most important center for fine food products from Italy and the southern European Diaspora as well as a major community nexus for education and information about food as it was intended to be in its most flavorful and honest form. Furthermore, it was fun to work with friends from school and the neighborhood – especially Troy Petersen, his best friend who has been with the main store since its most significant formative years.

Who doesn’t love an empire?

However, both young men also learned along the way the unique experience that is Caputo’s in Salt Lake City could not be replicated outside the community. A dedicated corps of family and friends has poured culinary heart and soul into making the business the best store as it possibly could be. And, as noted previously here in this blog, the family never would consider resting on its laurels. As one of just a handful of ‘outstanding retailer’ award winners last year from the North American Specialty Food Trade Association, the store’s owners and employees embrace completely the notion of continuous improvement.

While the new Caputo’s store in Salt Lake City’s 15th and 15th neighborhood is the culmination of dreams for two men who have been best friends since their childhood days, it also imparts an excellent lesson for any family business that might ever be tempted to spread its success as far and wide as possible.

Petersen exemplifies the best traits of Caputo’s solid employee lineup. “Growing up with them, I learned things 10 times faster than what was going on in school,” he explains. “It was easy to see the passion that went into the business.”

When the store put in a cheese cave in 2008, he became the affineur, mastering a scientifically tricky learning curve to get the most out of well more than 200 exquisitely fresh varieties of cheese in continuously calibrated ideal temperature and humidity conditions. It was a far cry from the store’s early days when Spanish manchego was the most exotic of the 18 to 20 cheeses carried.

However, the younger Caputo, now with his own young family, fully understood that his friend, married as well with two small children, rightly had expectations of carving out his own niche and creating his own legacy. Petersen went on to work with Creminelli Fine Meats and Sausage (whose products are carried at Caputo’s) guiding stores on how to display, discuss, and sell charcuterie products. Incidentally, the Altanta-based Portfolio Center Press has published a book ‘Meat, Salt, Time’ by Tony Seichrist examining the daily life of salami artisan Cristiano Creminelli.

In the meanwhile, Tony Caputo noticed a vacancy in the 15th and 15th neighborhood – home already to several locally owned excellent restaurants and a first-rate bookstore. “My dad always said that the best spot in the state to open a smaller store would be right here,” Caputo explains.

For Petersen, it was the outlet to becoming a partner and an investor. There, he could extend the already rich symbiotic relationship he had cultivated with the family and his colleagues at the downtown location. “For me, it is a labor of love,” he explains. “I always thought this would be the right platform for creating a friendly stomping ground for the neighborhood,” adds Petersen, who lives just three blocks from the store.

And, hardly surprising, the new 1,600-square-foot store, which includes deli service and uses wind energy in line with the sustainability model of its larger counterpart downtown, has been bustling since its soft opening this summer. “Workers renovating the store told me that neighbors were anxiously pressing them about when the store would be ready,” Peterson says. Likewise, Petersen and his staff worked on an intensive four-week training regimen so that employees would be ready to answer any conceivable customer question.

For some neighbors, whose busy schedules do not allow them to go downtown as often as they might like, the new location has been their first interaction with Caputo’s well-storied line of cheese, chocolate, charcuterie, olive oil, vinegars, and honey. “We’ve even had some customers who brought visitors directly from the airport here to the new store,” Petersen adds. Soon, the new store also will offer classes like those featured downtown and an expanded sandwich menu. Wine and beer also will be offered once a liquor license becomes available, rarely a timely process in Utah these days.

Taking product volume into consideration, the new store also boosts the strategic potential of the Caputo’s capacity to extend and diversify their product offerings especially as the critical mass of fresh, sustainable, honest foods grows and consumer palates become increasingly discriminating about the quality and taste of products.

OTHER CAPUTO NEWS

Caputo’s wildly popular food classes resume Sept. 27 with a fall slate that will touch on everything from chocolate to cheeses and pairings with wine and beer as well as a cooking with chocolate class (to be conducted with Vanessa Chang, one of SLC’s best-known food writers and bloggers). The class will focus on savory dishes, with historical roots going back four centuries, that incorporate chocolate.

When it comes to outstanding food products, in the nearly 40 classes offered each year, Matt Caputo makes it easy for people to take the metaphoric red pill made famous in The Matrix. For example, in the introductory chocolate tasting classes, with as many 80 people attending at a time, Caputo quickly dispenses with the famed name pretenders, revealing their paltry content of true chocolate and extensive use of artificial ingredients. And, then he introduces participants to the wonders of Chocolatier Blue, Amano Chocolate, Amedei, and others that are now part of a distinguished collection available at the store.

Caputo’s has shaped the classes as an integral part of its larger mission of creating a local food enterprise that is sustainable, accessible, and affordable and that celebrates why truly fresh, environmentally responsible ingredients comprise the cornerstone of outstanding cuisine.

Indeed, the Caputo family has demonstrated why its tasting and cooking classes have become the essential ingredient in its branding, tied directly to preserving a centuries-old tradition of southern European and Italian cuisine and food products. The classes not only serve the needs equally of the gourmet foodie and the thrifty consumer but they also orient the store’s employees at the front line to be effective guides for the customer’s specific needs.

“Our customers deserve that we are honest and it makes no sense to try and do the hard sell of the most expensive products,” he explains. For example, the classes are designed to help consumers navigate with an increasing sense of confidence the imposing selection of olive oils available. Rightly so, Caputo breaks the products into manageable categories ranging from least expensive to most expensive, paralleling the best ways to use them.

The classes also are a good channel for understanding how globalization has shaped the food economy, especially in the ways in which pure, honest, simple cultural food traditions are being standardized, repackaged, and sold utterly different from their origins.

The cost per class is a highly reasonable $25 with a wine pairing available at an extra $15. Cooking classes are $45 with a wine pairing available at an extra $15. For more information, see here.

The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer was first staged off-Broadway 25 years ago. A collaboration of the Utah AIDS Foundation, in its 25th year, and Plan-B Theatre Company, in its 20th year, brought a reading of The Normal Heart to the Jeanne Wagner Theatre. The readers wore somber colors.

Before the reading, Stan Penfold spoke for the Utah AIDS Foundation and Jerry Rapier for Plan-B Theatre. The remarks, humorous and serious, fit the occasion, twenty-five years after the final events of the play. The outbreak of HIV/AIDS in New York in the early eighties brought grudging attention from the media and society. Medical research geared up and dollars slowly flowed to the cause.

Today, as Stan Penfold noted, “media is gone, visibility is gone.” And yet the virus continues.

The Normal Heart began in 1981, displayed starkly on stage behind the readers. Through the play, the year changed from 1982 to 1983 to 1984. The march of AIDS grew.

The Normal Heart involved activists, doctors and others affected by the march of the virus. Its center was Ned Weeks, read by Kirt Bateman. The reading began in a doctor’s office with several men waiting to be tested. “28th case; 16 are dead.” One man was diagnosed positive and said, “I’m going to die. That’s the bottom line.”

The Normal Heart ran through reactions to the disease from people who had been diagnosed and those close to them. It followed different lines of advocacy, from steady Bruce Niles, read by Doug Fabrizio, to fiery, often angry Ned, to the concern and wonder of polio-stricken and wheelchair-bound Dr. Emma Bruckner, read by Christy Summerhays.

One character said he was going to be the one who kicked it. By 1983, the incidence of AIDS had grown. This was shown or heard through the constant phone calls being received in an office setting and the statement: “we’re all going to go crazy living this epidemic every minute.”

The Normal Heart took on politicians, The New York Times for relegating early AIDS stories to its innermost pages, The Voice for largely ignoring a crisis directly relevant to its readers, and a number of other institutions and people. “There is not a good word to be said for anyone’s behavior in this whole mess.”

HIV/AIDS remains a challenge in the world, the country and Utah. The reading of The Normal Heart was a reminder of difficult times and a call to current challenges. The work remains important, and it continues to touch the community.

Fittingly, to a standing ovation, the readers left the stage, determined.

“This is not ‘Arizona Light,’” Representative Stephen Sandstrom said after he “revealed” his “Illegal Immigration Enforcement Act.”

Meaning: “This is ‘Arizona Light.’”

Arizona Light largely mirrors Arizona’s SB1070, enjoined in a federal court. The proposal reveals more than just simple copying: it reveals a curious unfamiliarity with Utah law.

Section 76-9-1008 of Arizona Light virtually copies Section 63-99a-104 of SB81, which was passed by the 2008 Utah legislature and went into effect on July 1, 2009.

Three possibilities:

1. Sandstrom is ignorant of Utah law.

2. Sandstrom believes in flattery through imitation.

3. Sandstrom did not write his own bill.

Some comparisons to Arizona’s SB1070:

1. Police officers must check immigration status after a lawful stop, detention or arrest when reasonable suspicion exists as to the immigration status of the person stopped, detained or arrested.

2. Racial profiling prohibited.

3. Willful failure of alien to carry documents indicating lawful status.

4. Creation of a right to sue agencies that limit enforcement of federal immigration laws.

5. Frustration and desperation over federal inaction on immigration.

Arizona Light is less wordy than Arizona’s SB1070. It has shed provisions that proscribe day labor and the users of such labor.

Arizona Light does not contain a statement on legislative intent. Arizona’s SB1070 had the intent to “make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona.” In other words, the law aimed to put the screws to the undocumented population until it surrendered and left the state.

Arizona Light has revised Arizona SB1070 in an attempt at constitutionality. Its constitutionality could be argued, but the proposal is still misguided. Immigration reform by law and by logic must ultimately be carried out at the national level. Arizona Light would be costly, divisive and disruptive for Utah, which already has substantial economic pressures to deal with in delivering a balanced budget for a state that continues to be among the fastest growing in terms of population.

Sandstrom’s ignorance is dangerously irresponsible and would levy a negative economic impact upon the state requiring years to undo. Bad politics make bad policy which, in turn, makes bad law. A forthcoming article in the Cardozo Law Review documents the first empirical study of its kind in looking at the economic impact of laws regarding local immigration regulation that have been passed by cities and counties since 2005. The authors demonstrate these laws had a 1 to 2 percent negative effect on employment. For the average county, this translates to a range of about 337 to 675 lost jobs, affecting authorized and unauthorized workers. While employment in some industries, such as restaurants, dropped, others gained, including grocery and liquor stores, in a specific jurisdiction. Most importantly, it underscores why immigration reform must be based not on assumptions but empirical evidence.

We face challenges in education, health and economics. Let’s work on those.

Who says Latinos are slow for freedom?

Argentina now has marriage equality.

On Wednesday, Luis Majul wrote in his column (Spanish version) for the Argentine daily La Nación:

The heated controversy over marriage equality should not be dominated by political interests and religious interests, but by intellectual honesty and free thought.

Meanwhile, the LDS Church twists over whether or not it was involved in the political battle in Buenos Aires. See here.

Despite the differences in hemisphere and wine quality, Argentina and Utah share some similarities. Judge for yourself with the words from Majul:

Thousands of same-sex couples live in matrimonial harmony, although they cannot yet be married….

[Beyond political and religious posturing] there is a social dynamic that advances strongly and without doing damage. Sooner or later the laws will recognize the rights of thee minorities because there is no political or religious interest that can detain reality much longer.

In Argentina, one particular detention of societal reality ended yesterday. How much longer for the United States and Utah?

DID YOU KNOW?

Bolstered by glorious weather, a number of new activities, and a stellar lineup of artists and performers, the 2010 Utah Arts Festival is on track to break attendance records. Thursday saw the biggest crowds for an opening night, measured through key benchmarks including significant increases in ATM withdrawals on festival grounds, a 20 percent increase in Web site traffic, more than 1,400 iPhone application downloads and occupancy reports from security supervisors.

Although hard ticket numbers will be available after the festival closes, Festival Director Lisa Sewell says, “In my 15 years with the Festival, this Thursday definitely felt like the largest opening night yet. [Friday and Saturday] were filled with crowds of students, families and young adults at every festival venue.”

Keep in mind that the UAF operates as a nonprofit organization with festival revenue accounting for 80 percent of the organization’s annual operating budget of about $1.6 million. Other forms of revenue include smaller fundraisers throughout the year, and the annual Summer Solstice concert. This year’s concert, featuring the band Cake, sold out, further solidifying the organization’s position. And, it is with that strong sense of fiscal prudence, the UAF was able to provide the most comprehensive slate of creative artists in every imaginable genre of culture and arts ever presented at a Utah-based cultural gathering.

ARTIST AWARDS

Four artists received Best in Show honors, which means they will be automatically invited to the 2011 Utah Arts Festival and will have their booth fees waived. The winners are:

Juli Adams (Painting), Seattle (Gallery Association selection). For more information about her work, contact her here.

Mark Breithaupt (Sculpture), Phoenix (Festival Board Members selection). For more information about his work, see here.

Trevin Prince (Painting), Logan, Utah (Artist Marketplace Jury selection). For more information about his work, see here.

Brett Varney (Drawings/Pastels), Sechet, British Columbia (Sponsor Jury selection). For more information about his work, see here.

Four other artists were given Awards of Merit, which means they are automatically invited to the 2011 Utah Arts Festival without having to submit to the jury selection process. They are:

Dave Borba (3-D Mixed Media), Salt Lake City (Gallery Association selection). For more information about his work, see here.

Yan Inlow (Fiber), Alameda, California (Festival Board Members selection). For more information about the artist’s work, see here.

David Mayhew (Photography), Denver (Artist Marketplace Jury selection). For more information about his work, see here.

Toby Mercer (2-D Media), Kalispell, Montana (Sponsor Jury selection). For more information about the artist’s work, see here.

The Artist Choice Award went to Laurie Thal and Lia Kass (Glass), Wilson, Wyoming. For more information about their work, see here.

LITERARY AWARDS

SlamNUBA from Denver took the festival’s premiere team slam poetry competition in a 90-minute series of rounds that drew hundreds of spectators to the Big Mouth Cafe. The team bested two groups from Salt Lake City and competitors from Mesa, Arizona and Boise, Idaho.

Winners in the Wasatch IronPen and Ultra IronPen competitions with the Salt Lake Community College’s Community Writing Center:

ADULT CATEGORIES

Fiction

1st Place: Jon Napolitano
Honorable Mention: Marie Mischel

Non-Fiction

1st Place: Joan Parker
Honorable Mention: Emily Small

Poetry

1st Place: Kathy Ann Rekoutis
Honorable Mention: Erica L. Meyer

UltraPen Marathon

1st Place: Lin Ostler
Honorable Mention: Dixon Lee

YOUTH CATEGORIES

Fiction

1st Place: Rebecca Nickerson
Honorable Mention: Mikaela Slade

Non-Fiction

1st Place: Zachary Austen Korbin

Poetry

1st Place: Rebecca Nickerson
Honorable Mention: Ryan Joseph Carter

Ultra-Marathon

1st Place: Zachary Austen Korbin

DID YOU KNOW?

Doing its part to keep local nonprofits stable during a still-tenuous period of economic recovery, Market Street Grill’s food booth will raise funds for Voices for Utah Children, a statewide advocacy organization to represent the public health and welfare interests of all children, especially those in economically vulnerable circumstances, throughout Utah.

The Market Street Grill is featuring reasonably priced shrimp cocktails, its signature clam chowder served in a bread bowl, and the house dessert of ice cream with sabayon sauce and fresh strawberries.

After last year’s phenomenal response for its hands-on workshops where participants made handbags, satchels, wallets, and tote bags from reclaimed billboard and vinyl materials, the 350-member Salt Lake City chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) has returned to the Utah Arts Festival with the Revinylize Project which now has blossomed into a year-round community effort.

The workshop’s popularity is its sheer simplicity. No specialized or previous design experience is necessary and AIGA members help participants with tips about designs, layout and color and provide templates. “In fact, last year, we had a young girl who made a bag at one of the workshops and returned the next day to show off the bag which she had decorated with soccer stickers,” Kevin Perry, SLC chapter president, recalls.

For $10, a nominal fee to cover the costs of materials and tools, participants will be able to make a customized bag, which does not require any sewing, or accessory. Visitors also can purchase vinyl bags made by AIGA members at the organization’s booth near the festival stage – including those made from coffee burlap sacks and last year’s Utah Arts Festival graphic design materials. And, proceeds go to other AIGA Revinylize activities that help local refugees establish their economic footing.

Last year, AIGA sold more than 200 bags and hundreds lined up to attend the scheduled hour-long workshops that were held four times each day during the festival. In order to accommodate as many people as possible this year, AIGA has adopted a continuously operating schedule providing 20 workshop seats that can be claimed anytime they open up. “Some participants will work quickly – in as little as 15 minutes,” Perry adds.

Revinylize has resonated particularly strongly because it provides a valuable hands-on lesson not only about good principles underlying smart design but also of the impact of an individual’s creative resourcefulness when it comes to producing a high-quality functional and aesthetically appealing item from recycled materials. For the festival alone, AIGA has acquired more than 400,000 square feet of materials – much of it former billboards or large vinyl signage featured at events – that otherwise would have been dumped in landfills. The sustainability issue has become a critical one for the design community considering that more than 600,000 tons of billboard material are created annually, much of which, unfortunately, ends up in landfills.

AIGA members also have ensured all of the non-biodegradable billboard materials used at the workshops have come from Utah, not from any other state. The billboard materials work well, Perry says, because AIGA professionals can demonstrate easily how portions of particular graphic elements such as large letters, tool lines, logos, and shapes can be used to create artistically appealing designs.

For more information about the SLC chapter of AIGA, see here, and for more information about Revinylize, see here.

DID YOU KNOW?

In 2009, the Utah Arts Festival was ranked 39 among the nation’s top 100 festivals. The Festival is a member of the International Festival and Events Association, an organization with a roster of 2,000 members representing events in 29 countries. Since the year it joined, the Festival has garnered numerous awards, competing against the likes of such prestigious events as the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival, Denver’s Cherry Creek Arts Festival, the Kentucky Derby Festival, Houston International Festival, and the Portland Rose Festival.

LITERARY ARTS

The literary arts activities at this year’s Utah Arts Festival will be a slamming good time, according to Melissa Bond who is overseeing this increasingly prominent aspect of the four-day cultural gathering.

A new significant feature is the festival’s first-ever slam poetry team competition as a warmup for the national poetry slam competition which will be held August in St. Paul, Minnesota. Two teams from Salt Lake City – Salt City Slam and Team Salt Poetelyptic – will compete with Tiny Mesa Poetry Slam from Mesa, Arizona, Black Pearl Poetry Slam from Phoenix, and SlamNUBA of Denver. The competition will be held Saturday, June 26, from 8:30 to 10 p.m. on the Big Mouth Café Stage.

And, these performance poets will thrill. Jesse Parent is the current SlamMaster of Salt City Slam, the 2010 Individual World Poetry Slam representative for SLC, and an executive council member for Poetry Slam, Inc, the nonprofit running all national poetry slam events and competitions.

Ed Mabrey, a member of the Phoenix contingent, is the 2007 Individual World Poetry Slam champion and two-time Haiku national slam champion. SlamNUBA also has several heavy hitters including Amy Everhartm the 2009 Individual World Poetry Slam champion; Megan Rickman, 2010 Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist, and Jen Rinaldi, a member of the 2006 national poetry slam champion team from Denver.

The regular poetry slam event will have competitive rounds beginning at 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 24, and 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 25, with the final slamoff on Sunday, June 27, at 8 p.m.

The slamming doesn’t stop there. Seth Walker, who electrified Utah Arts Festival audiences last year with some of the most naturally sounding neobeat poetry ever heard, returns this year as a festival headliner performing five times on various stages (Friday, June 25, 5 p.m., Big Mouth Café; Saturday, June 26, at 6 and 9:30 p.m., Earth Garden Café, and Sunday, June 27, at 4:45 and 10 p.m. on the Plaza Stage).

Walker, a Houston native, is a current team member of the Austin Poetry Slam, one of the longest running poetry venues in the nation and home at one point to virtually every nationally known performance poet. More about Walker in a separate feature article below.

Of course, Utah’s literary arts venue would not be complete without an appearance by Alex Caldiero, one of the state’s best known literary figures who is the subject of The Sonosopher, a feature-length documentary film directed by Torben Bernhard and Travis Low, that has appeared in several major film festivals.

Clearly more comfortable with the title of sonosopher as opposed to the more traditional tag of poet and author, Caldiero, 60, takes an idea and process (and not particularly a “literary” one) to the extreme. Sometimes, the words become progressively indistinct amid a palette of sounds – some musical, some natural, others synthesized – and then they’re reconstructed as the process reverses. Or, perhaps a simple phrase or sentence is deconstructed with emotionally charged rhythmic loops that build the tension and then release it.

True to his art, Caldiero has set up the Poetarium, which will operate similarly to the old-fashioned coin-operated fortune teller attractions one would see at a carnival or beach boardwalk. Patrons will select from a series of slips of papers with specific terms or phrases written, insert them into a slot, the curtains will open, and, voila, they will get a spontaneous rantcantation from the master himself.

The Poetarium will operate Thursday, June 24, at 7:30 p.m, and Saturday, June 26, at 3:30 and 8 p.m. at the Big Mouth Café.

Another prominent figure is Teresa Jordan, who will read Friday, June 25, at 6 p.m. at the Big Mouth Café. No stranger to the Intermountain West literary scene, she is a fourth-generation family member of cattle ranch owners in the Iron Mountain country of southeast Wyoming. Jordan has written or edited seven books about Western rural life, culture, and the environment, including the memoir ‘Riding the White Horse Home’ and ‘Cowgirls: Women of the American West,’ a widely cited study of women on ranches and in the rodeo.

The recipient of the Western Heritage Award from the Cowboy Hall of Fame for scriptwriting and a literary fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts as well as many other literary awards, a recent book is ‘Fieldnotes from Yosemite,’ the second volume in her series of Sketchbook Expeditions. A Yale alumna, she wrote a thesis on Wyoming ranchers during the Great Depression that won the McClintock Prize for History of the American West. She later returned to school earning a fine art degree in drawing and painting from the University of Utah in 2002.

There also will be readings with Bond, Sara Caldiero-Oertli, and Raw Xtract (hip hop poetry) and others. All told, there are more than 25 hours of readings and literary performances scheduled on the perennially popular Big Mouth Café stage.

There are two 24-hour writing competitions, coordinated and judged with the help of the Salt Lake Community College’s Community Writing Center staff.

And, budding writers of all ages can choose from among more than 10 hands-on writing workshops, also coordinated by SLCC staffers, covering everything from the shortest micro fiction to non-rhyming poetry and writing through parenting.

Other workshops – in which participants will write and get feedback during the hour-long sessions – include how to turn personal interviews into narratives, how to inflect writing with insights about contemporary culture and social issues, and how to overcome writer’s block. For kids, there will be DaDa poetry and word play.

Last year brought more than 40 writers to the first Wasatch IronPen Literary Marathon Competition, and Bond expects a similar if not larger showing this year. Participants can enter in one of three categories – fiction, nonfiction, and poetry – and they will get their writing cues Friday, June 25, at 6 p.m. and will need to submit their work 24 hours later in order to be eligible for judging.

For the truly adventurous, there is an Ultra IronPen challenge in which authors will submit works in all three genres within the 24-hour period.

Registration, which closes at 5:55 p.m. on June 25, is $10 for the IronPen competition and $30 for the Ultra IronPen portion. For more information, call (801) 957-4992 or visit here.

Judging is based on youth and adult categories and winners will read selections from their entries Sunday, June 27, at 2 p.m. at the Big Mouth Café.

This year, Walker, a headliner making five appearances on various festival stages, is sporting an SLC tattoo on the back of his lower left leg. “Here, in Salt Lake City, the free thinkers are really free thinkers,” Walker says. “There are no average joes here and the SLC scene is so alive with counterculture talent.”

There also is at least one other change. Last year, Walker, who entered the slam poetry scene in 2007, was mostly on the road – 10 months, in fact. At the time, he said his passion is cultural networking, traveling from city to city, making enough just to get to the next stop. “I arrived in Boise with $12 and came to Salt Lake with $30,” he said in 2009.

This year, he comes to Salt Lake City as a new resident of Austin, Texas, where he is a team member of Austin Poetry Slam, one of the nation’s longest poetry venues that has been home to many national poetry slam champions and is an integral part of that city’s cultural scene.

Walker’s credentials are impressive especially considering the short time in which he has built his street cred. He has regularly won or placed second in virtually every high-profile slam competition in Houston and Texas since 2007. Prior to his first appearance last year in SLC, he also took top honors in slam competitions in Phoenix, Tucson, and Los Angeles – quite extraordinary considering this Baton Rouge native once was ensnared in drug abuse and gang violence. Today, Walker returns periodically to Baton Rouge whenever he gets a craving for the region’s distinct cuisine, including a crawfish boil.

Walker’s creative pulse took hold when he started writing journals at the age of 8, feeling no compulsion to hold back whatever was on his mind. Only after his mother had confiscated his writings did he create a metaphorical language code only decipherable by him. For Walker, journal writing became the pretext for eradicating those pesky neuroses that inhibit genuine expression. After some detours in his teenage years, the turning point in Walker’s life came after Hurricane Katrina and he returned to Houston developing not only his craft in performance poetry but also working with many of the city’s nonprofit organizations serving economically disadvantaged groups as well as those affected by domestic abuse.

The following comment by Kenn Rodriguez, a national poetry slam champion, seems to best sum up Walker’s craft:

“Floating above the seas of disposable ideas and so-called ‘news’ presented by supposed ‘Fair and Balanced’ hucksters, Seth Walker brings it real, raw and unrelentingly. His spoken word is emotional but not over-wrought; to the point but not simplistic. Seth Walker is a walkabout version of the evening news. In a world of false messengers, Seth is the real thing.”

He is known for an unrelentingly honest, raw stream of emotion, revolutionary spirit, unabashed spirituality, unashamed sense of sexuality (for example, “Ode to Female Ejaculation” neither pornographic nor objectifying) and make-no-excuse sense of politics. And, embedded in the rawness of his work is a poignant sense that the youth of his generation are more than anxious to reclaim the genuine unfettered roots of the American experience without the necessity of government or multinational corporate sanctions. However, it also is worth noting the absence of obscenities in Walker’s work, except for those instances when its usage is intended to make an artistic and political point. Each word – no matter how benign or provocative it may seem – is treated with the utmost respect.

His spoken gifts are undeniable. His rhythms, cadences and freestyle verse pounce upon his listeners with compelling eloquence devoid of cliché. The precocious genius of his language is almost frightening in its originality. How can one so young sustain such poetic and artistic authority?

For example, his new recording compilation – The Government Is Your Bitch – includes selections intensely personal yet universal for their potential to connect and resonate with individuals – colorblind, the objector, dear mom, trust in dustin, revolution of love, my fellow pariahs, the flood, and the striking letter to my little brother, which is a lament about his sibling who is thinking about joining the military. In “Immigrant Nation,” he manages narrative structure so naturally, juxtaposes language with unfailingly punctual efficiency, and suggests metaphorical imagery conveying an entire political debate in a way that no columnist, policy expert, or political leader could satisfactorily accomplish in a blog, newspaper, or magazine piece of prose. The following excerpt proves the point:

I wished I could slit my wrist and paint her red white and blue
Go downstairs and dowse the dawn too
Thank them for all the work they do
To inspire freedom writers to spell pictures
In colors ethnocentrism has yet imagined
To love people more than our constitution ever fathomed
But we’re too worried about who’s mowing our neighbors lawn
To realize that there’s something fundamentally wrong

So fight on you sun lifters
Smuggle in your brothers and sisters
Take my job if you need it
Write poetry in words I don’t speak yet
Remind us what Malcolm X meant
When he said “Through whatever means necessary”

I plead to foreign countries to send us your hungry
Your tired, poor and restless
Stereotypes are just government hype supplied for scare tactics
To shut down the borders
Free speech is an American dream now that they’ve passed the gag orders
We can’t build a fascist nation without thinking about retaliations to demonstrations
Baton coming down on American skulls
Like jokes about green cards on hard working ears
When blood sweat and tears don’t earn you a piece of this pie
I lose my appetite
Maybe it’s time to translate “Do not go gentle into that good night”
Out of English
So we can learn what it is to work hard enough to deserve to read it

Until then …… My home is your home
Make my face familiar
You are my familia
And one day we’ll make one united immigrant nation together

Walker’s performance times will be Friday, June 25, 5 p.m., Big Mouth Café; Saturday, June 26, at 6 and 9:30 p.m., Earth Garden Café, and Sunday, June 27, at 4:45 and 10 p.m. on the Plaza Stage.

Among the more than 60 short films to be featured at the eighth annual Fear No Film portion of the Utah Arts Festival are some world-class gems and a bounty of boundary-busting artistic creations. These include films that target immigration, euthanasia, the sense of home and place after a natural disaster, the awkwardness of social interaction and dating, body image, tattoos, the use of pity-based appeals for charities serving the disabled, and the tenuous state of comic books in American pop culture.

And, there are plenty of confections including several award-winning animated films, a hilarious music video about a guy who tries to restore an old Lambretta scooter, a slyly done short about Death who is mistaken as the tardy babysitter (pictured), and the collaboration of Danny Elfman, Aurelio Voltaire, and Rasputina.

Add in a festival jury of film-making and media industry peers along with audience members who will select the festival winner from among eight short productions by Utah filmmakers.

With the assistance of the SLC Film Center, the Fear No Film portion of the Utah Arts Festival, which drew some 7,000 people to various screenings last year in the City Library Auditorium, is once again poised to be among the most discussed aspects of the four-day schedule of events. Working for six months and paring down nearly 300 entries to a manageable list of offerings, Topher Horman once again has put his distinctive curatorial stamp on this year’s schedule.

Two years ago, he built the schedule around elements of a cheer for social justice and advocacy. Last year, he organized it around the six basic questions a journalist uses to deconstruct the news story into a framework that becomes readily comprehensible and identifiable in terms of human interest for the reader or broadcast viewer. This year, Horman has achieved the improbable – orchestrating a schedule based on the Seven Dwarves. And, once again, each category’s screening has been tailored so that the audience is taken on a journey where the artistic intent of the films individually and as a whole become fully evident by the end of the screening.

Sleepy (The Best of Other Fests) – Films targeting basic social issues as a wake-up call.

Sneezy – Films, by virtue of a potentially polarizing approach or aesthetic, causing an uncontrollable reaction.

Dopey – Dude, kinda’ self-explanatory, right? Films are heavily infused with esoteric symbols, metaphors, video art, and experimental approaches. Their quirkiness may only become apparent long after leaving the air-conditioned dark auditorium and re-entering the bright, sun-baked plaza of the Library Square festival grounds.

Bashful – Films traversing many layers and textures that gradually are peeled back so that audience members can truly see their epiphanies.

Docs – Documentaries, informed and reportorial, that comprise different ways of telling a story.

Happy – Films, while not always necessarily focused on topics or stories that are happy on the surface, nonetheless leave the audience hopeful and appreciative for what a particular filmmaker has achieved.

Grumpy – Films that follow a trajectory of sad, sadder, and saddest followed by a slow yet definitive return to a state of full sunshine.

The films represent an extraordinary range of genre and enterprise, with some made on an impulsive whim and others running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some are as brief as two minutes and a few run between 20 and 27 minutes. Ten films come from other countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and Russia. Some already have won festival awards and a few represent the work of students in some of the nation’s best film schools. (PICTURED: Ben Garchar’s Somewhere Never Traveled)

Horman has orchestrated the screenings, all of which last just an hour or so, with scrupulous curatorial intent as will be readily acknowledged by filmgoers. A major feature is, as mentioned earlier, the Best of Other Fests (Sleepy) screenings, featuring five films that will be screened on Thursday (June 24) and, again, Friday (June 25) at 6 p.m. These films are featured in a separate post below.

Festival screenings for all seven categories will begin on the first day of the festival (June 24) and continue through the last day on June 27, with showings every two hours. Entries for the Utah Short Film of the Year competition will be screened June 24, 25, and 26 at 8 p.m. These Utah shorts are featured in a separate post below.

For more information about screening times and the schedule of when short films will be aired, go here.

Of particular interest are the following films. Horman advises that many of the screenings will include films with mature content so parental guidance is strongly advised. Each screening will include family-friendly programming during the 20 minutes before each daytime screening, he says, adding festival organizers are mindful that some families will enjoy the opportunity for a brief respite from the typically high temperatures expected during the festival.

SNEEZY

A Harlem Mother, directed by Ivana Todorovic, documents a mother (Jean) who works through the grief about her murdered son (Latraun) by fighting youth gun violence and supporting other parents who lost children through her organization “Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E.”

There are extraordinary moments in the film which includes footage of the mother intercut with footage shot by her son for a documentary that he had created before his untimely death. The mother gave Todorovic tapes of her son’s funeral which the director says represent the culmination of a parent’s pain and underscores the impact of gun violence upon the surviving family members.

Wet Dreams and False Images is a naturally humorous look at idealized representations of sexual beauty in celebrity images. Directed by Jesse Epstein (who also has a film in the Bashful category), this 12-minute short focuses on barbers in a Brooklyn shop who decorate their walls with photos of women celebrities and, in particular, one of the barbers (Dee-Dee) who rhapsodizes about why these women are perfect goddesses.

Epstein inflects the film with counterpoint by computer airbrush and touch-up artists who demonstrates precisely the dramatic change before the before and after photos of these celebrities. As one of them so aptly describes, “Dee-Dee’s been having wet dreams to false images.” Epstein, whose work has won honors at Sundance, was recently selected for “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine.

The Journey Home, directed by James Gambone from Minnesota, is a provocative look at the future of elder care in the United States, set in 2030. For The Unashamed is a hilarious take on how individuals act awkwardly in the most challenging social situations. Directed by Jared Barnett, a film studies major at The University of Utah, the film tracks odd and embarrassing stories being publicly shared about a man at his funeral.

Other films scheduled include They Can’t Deport Us All, a hip-hop music video about immigration shot in southern California by Rocky Curby; Hey Rachel… by Sylvia Liken of Brooklyn, and juncture by Brendan Wardlaw of Melbourne, Australia.

Screenings will take place Thursday, June 24, at 2 p.m., and Saturday, June 26, at 10 p.m.

DOPEY

Destination Day, directed by Chris Lassig of Clifton Hill, Australia, is perhaps best described in the director’s own words: “my short film about a man who travels back in time to change his past, only to run into the woman who made him want to change his past in the first place.” Based on a whole lot of conflicting opinions offered by film reviewers and aficionados at other festivals, audience members likely will have a wide range of reactions for the film, which does have quite a engaging opening hook and a cool twist at the end.

Coming from a group at Harvard, Yen-Ting Cho’s Kapsis is a animation piece for flute, electro-acoustic music, and video art which portrays an elegantly descriptive Nahua myth of a young girl who becomes a starfish. The animation is intended to be part of a contemporary opera – a collaboration between composer Edgar Barroso, designer Yen-Ting Cho, and filmmaker Aryo Danusiri.

Set to the tantalizing sounds of taiko, koto, and throat singing from the band On Ensemble, Yamasong, directed by Sam Hale of California, chronicles the fantastic journey of a patchwork girl and tortoise warrior. The film uses American-style Bunraku rod puppets and incorporates stop-motion animation with one of the film’s character’s – Cloudy, a Miyakazi-inspired floating cloud that accompanies the protagonists on their travels.

Other films scheduled include Evolution of an Idea by Grey Adkins of Maryland; Delusion by Alexander Markov of St. Petersburg, Russia; Mouse’s Birthday by Barry Morse of California, and Eyes, nose, mouth by Noemie Lafrance of New York.

Screenings will take place Friday, June 25, at 10 p.m. and Sunday, June 27, at 1 p.m.

BASHFUL

DemiUrge Esmesis, directed by Aurelio Voltaire and narrated by Danny Elfman, represents the painstakingly agonizing process of the artist at work – in the form of a mummified cat with an upset stomach. Part of Voltaire’s Chimerascope series, this whimsical slice of Goth animation features music by cello-rock trio Rasputina. This is Voltaire’s third offering at Fear No Film. Previous shorts featured the narration by Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs and Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance.

However, the real bonus in the newest film comes in Elfman’s narration. Those familiar know him as a composer, the lead singer of Oingo Boingo and for his Jack Skellington role. As Voltaire described in a FEARnet interview: “When you hear his narration in the film I think you’ll agree with me that he has a tremendously rich and colorful and charismatic voice. I’m just absolutely thrilled with the final product. And needless to say, just being in the same room with such an amazing talent was a dream all in itself.”

34x25x36 by Jesse Epstein of New York continues the exploration of the body image debate featured in another Fear No Film entry – Wet Dreams and False Images. Here, she visits a mannequin factory and interviews the workers who decide exactly how they should appear.

As she explained in a published interview, “The idea of perfection is very interesting. No one can be completely perfect, so why are we always surrounded by images of perfection? And I guess on some level, these things are unattainable but they keep us going. Ultimately we get something out of it, but I think it’s still a problem when people think there’s something wrong with them and there isn’t.”

Sacred Transformations, directed by Justine Nagan of Illinois, is a nine-minute film that was shot in one night on Chicago’s South Side. It follows Erik Spruth who helps, as he describes in his service information, “people who are tattooed, scarred, branded and or burnt from negative experiences to transform those marks into art pieces that celebrate one’s individuality.”

Other films scheduled include All systems go, Neil Armstrong by Robert Dohrmann of Oklahoma; Ghost Conversations by Jeremy Bessoff of Illinois; The Ladies: An Attempt to Communicate by Bryce Riley of Salt Lake City’s SpyHop Productions; Equanimity by Barrett DeLong of North Carolina; Love Draws Blood by Kate Raney of Illinois; Discernment Askew by Scott Halford of Ogden, Utah’s Foursight Festival, and Dinosaur! by Stephen Spector, Sindy Wilson, and Courtney Smith of New York.

Screenings will take place at Friday, June 25, at 2 p.m. and Saturday, June 26, at 6 p.m.

DOCS

No Pity, directed by Drew Goldsmith of Wisconsin, is an excellent and thoroughly engrossing short documentary about disability fundraising which has long assumed – and destructively so – that the best way to get people to part with their money was to play upon their feelings of pity. While Goldsmith acknowledges that other countries have moved toward campaigns that elicit respect and dignified support, he is intent on raising awareness of persistent campaigns in American-based charities that deal with autism.

As he notes in his statement of purpose: “These pity-based representations of autism by U.S.-based charities not only contrast with the more respectful fundraising techniques currently used for other disabilities, they also contrast with the more respectful fundraising techniques used by autism charities outside the United States. In response to the pity-based tactics used in U.S. autism fundraising, autistic self-advocates and their allies have begun speaking out, just as their predecessors in disability rights spoke out over 20 years ago.”

Other films include Colin Sullivan by Brandon Ryan of Florida, which tells the story of a competitive darts player who fell from grace because of scandal and The Gospel According to Matthew by Sofian Khan of New York, a remarkably candid look at infomercial personality Matthew Lesko. The Fall of The Cougar by Sam Derby of California is framed as a classic British safari show but it follows elusive lives and mating habits of Homo Sapien Cougarilia and the men who hunt them in bars and pubs.

Others include Dessicator by Wijnand Geraerts and Monique Stoop of The Netherlands, and Spare Change, a PLEX music video, by Jennifer Podemki of Toronto.

Screenings will take place at Thursday, June 24, at 4 p.m. and Sunday, June 27, at 3 p.m.

HAPPY

Dig Comics, directed by Miguel Cima and Ertug Tufekcioglu of California, explores attempts to resuscitate popular interest in American comic books. The filmmakers take to the streets in the hopes of winning converts and meanwhile interview comics creators, retailers and pop culture historians to make sense of why licensed comic book properties – The Dark Knight, Spiderman, X-Men, etc. – are breaking box office records even while the source material struggles to find an audience. The film won honors at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival.

I Can’t Strip My Lambretta Down In The Kitchen Ska Blues, directed by Britain’s Sharron Harris, is The Animal Jack Band’s first-ever music video. The three-piece group, led by Oli Brindley, 26, on vocals and double bass, describe the sound and style of the music as a unique mix of ska, skiffle, rockabilly and jump blues. Filmed in the family’s Pembroke Dock summer home over the course of two days, the video follows the lyrics telling the story of a man (Animal Jack) who buys an old Lambretta scooter and begins the ambitious task of taking it apart and hoping to restore it fully. The trouble is that his sweetheart is annoyed to find engine parts strewn across the kitchen where Animal Jack moved after rain interfered with his work. Pay close attention to the home’s retro furnishings – a shrine to 1950s décor.

Somewhere Never Traveled by Ben Garchar of New York represents his second Utah Arts Festival appearance. Described by Garchar as a personal “bookmark” film, it simply features two characters standing in a field – or, as he suggests, are they just actors? The camera rolls, unfolding the backdrop of debilitated icons of once-impressive industry, chronicling suspense, a kiss, and then the abrupt bark of “cut” from the director. Tearing down the fourth wall for his audience, Garchar leaves the film open ended where the questions of when does a scene really end and what does it mean challenge viewers to contemplate that blur between cinematic fantasy and reality. The film has had quite a successful run on the festival circuit.

Other films scheduled include The Empress by Lyle Pisio of Calgary; Road Side Insistence by Brantley Aufill of New York; Fledgling by Tony Gault and Elizabeth Henry of Colorado, and Brilliant by Marilyn Bright of Calgary. Screenings will take place at Friday, June 25, at 4 p.m., and Sunday, June 27, at 5 p.m.

GRUMPY

Eye to Eye, directed by the Irvine, California team of Andrea Capranico, Nicholas Wiesnet, Breanna Wing, and Hannah Taylor, chronicles the fight in Cameroon’s rainforest to reverse the course of extinction for chimpanzees and gorillas who are being threatened and killed by bushmeat hunters.

Death in Charge, directed by Indiana’s Devi Snively, is a subtly devilish 15-minute short shot in the true spirit of the old E.C. Horror Comics series. Death, traditionally outfitted with the cloak and the scythe, is mistaken by the mother for the babysitter, who will never arrive because of a freak fatal accident. Death is left to tend to Whitney, a precocious nine-year-old child with her own underlying sinister dimensions, who teaches her new caretaker the simple joys violent video games, macaroni and cheese and Sea Monkeys. Oddly charming and quite funny, the film nevertheless packs quite a punch at the end but … well … viewers will have to discover it for themselves. The film already has won four awards including two at 2009 Shriek Fest and the Dragon*Con Short Film Festival.

Other films include Frames by Jaime Chapin of Texas; Howl by Eric Hickey of California, and Slide by Kathy Nation of Utah.

Screenings will take place at Thursday, June 24, at 10 p.m. and Saturday, June 26, at 2 p.m.

DID YOU KNOW?

On a large scale, there are several environmentally friendly measures that have gained a solid foothold at the Utah Arts Festival. Staff and volunteers are being especially vigilant about reducing the volume of waste that would end up at a landfill and ensuring that recyclable plastic, cardboard, aluminum, paper, and glass are being processed at locally owned plants within Utah.

Vegetable oil used at the food booths is sent to a local business that converts it into bio-diesel. The four-day event results in between 10 and 12 tons of garbage with a good portion of it being recycled, especially in glass and cardboard. Food waste also is composted. Also effective has been eliminating the use of plastic bags in disposal bins which results in an estimated savings costs of at least $4,000.

Festival volunteers also will be stationed throughout the festival grounds just for the purpose of helping visitors decide which bins they should use for disposing their plates, cups, and paper.

Organizers also have established a bike valet service and visitors who bicycle to the event get a $2 discount on their festival admission. Last year, nearly 1,200 used the service. In fact, almost a third of the bicyclists who use the valet service come on Saturday during the festival.

ARTIST MARKETPLACE

Represented among the more than 145 artists are techniques and media that often blend traditional approaches with barrier-bending and convention-breaking touches that clearly distinguish the work as a fresh 21st Century conception. There are 55 newcomers and 49 artists from Utah.

The list below is just a sampling of the many distinctly personal perspectives visitors will see at the festival, beginning this Thursday at Library Square. The artists’ marketplace will be open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 10 p.m. For more information, go here.

Steve Appel

A former shipyard welder who was laid off in 1989, Steve Appel of Prescott, Arizona, uses nuts, bolts, ball bearings and other metal fasteners to create more than 200 varieties of metal figures that are shown doing everything from riding horseback to sky diving. He has doctors practicing on patients, musicians, sport figures, and even pool players complete with a pool table including balls and pockets. Appel also designs pieces for individual requests such as a train engineer for a birthday gift or a figure blowing glass for a glass art gallery owner.

Appel’s art started as a hobby while he was still working at the shipyards and he occasionally sold his work at weekend art and craft fairs. After losing his job because of an economic recession, he turned his work into a full-time enterprise, doing more than 40 shows just in his first year. His pieces also have grown in complexity including a full tennis court with players as well a scene with a guy sitting in a chair watching TV, seven kids scrambling around the room, and, the piece de resistance, his wife about to clobber him with a rolling pin. More about his work can be found here.

Leia Bell

A native of Tennessee who started her art career more than 20 years ago selling crayon sketches in her neighborhood, Leia Bell moved to Utah, eventually earned her bachelor of fine arts degrees in printmaking from the University of Utah, and contemplated how to use her collegiate training.

After meeting Phil Sherburne (who would become her life and business partner), the owner of the all-ages rock music venue Kilby Court, Bell started creating small sets of colorful, eye-popping screenprinted posters promoting various performers – so appealing that they were regularly snatched by admirers from wherever they were posted. Among her many projects is Signed and Numbered, a gallery featuring collectible prints and posters – including those of artists throughout the United States and overseas – and local custom-built frames.

Today, Bell’s work, which also has graced the covers of virtually every independent magazine published in Salt Lake City , has earned a reputation well beyond the state’s border, including features in Newsweek, Print and Nylon magazines. This week, her series of three original screenprints depicting Utah’s varied urban and natural terrain is the thematic art for this year’s Utah Arts Festival, which will become a permanent part of the Artspace Gallery exhibition in downtown SLC in the festival headquarters. More about her work is found here.

Cynthia Duff

Cynthia Duff, who grew up in Denver, learned at an early age to appreciate nature and art watching her father paint landscapes. In high school, her art poster won a city-wide competition, which she says, in her biographical statement, gave her the epiphany: “It was at that time I realized my passion in life was to be an artist and Commercial Art was my way to make a living.”

In the 1980s, she moved to Grand Island, Nebraska to run a family business and worked as a freelance artist, becoming extensively involved in the local art scene, establishing a park event that now attracts more than 100 exhibitors, and creating the Grand Island city logo. The city is known internationally as a migrating point for the Sand Hill Cranes, a fact that inspired many of her paintings. Just a little less than five years, Duff decided to devote all of her energies to her creative work, set up a studio in Grand Junction, Colorado, and now uses a variety of elements to orchestrate her art on paper, canvas, word or metal, drawing intent focus on the chemistry of color and the rhythm of shapes. More of her work can be featured here.

Michael Leu

Like many other artists featured at this year’s festival, Michael Leu, who was born in Taipei. gained his first recognition as a child, winning first place in an international children’s painting contest in Tokyo. He studied art in Taiwan and then honed his printmaking skills in California, where he lives today. In many of his travel landscapes, Leu combines color and elements to reflect the juxtaposed yet simultaneous effects of a native-born innocence and the worldly sophistication of a tourist who knows how to appreciate the small and large treasures of visiting a new land. Colors and images are vibrant, immediately instilling a well-deserved sense of happiness and light-hearted amusement. More about his work can be found here.

Tom Mills

Tom Mills of Midway, Utah, is a graduate of Penn State University where he studies photography. Working as a newspaper reporter, this Pennsylvanian native quit his job and moved west in 1991 and started shooting photo art shortly after arriving in Park City. He has mastered his print and mounting techniques allowing for 30 x 40 enlargements which still keep a tight grain integrity and everything used in the mounting process is acid free, including the ink in which he signs the prints. More about his work can be found here.

Mariana Palova

One of the youngest artists featured this year, Mariana Palova, who lives and works in Mexico, will turn 20 just days after the festival but her work is gaining attention rapidly for a strikingly original take on neo-surrealism. While she is studying graphic design, her passion always has been based in art and her work and approach have come completely on her own instincts and constant practice. Inspired by a brief stint as a fashion model, Palova started experimenting with self-portraits, and had her first exhibition at 17. Her artistic statement starts as follows: “I am my own model in almost all my pieces, sometimes the people take this like a reflection of vanity. But my work is not a self portrait of me, my body is just an instrument, a tool that I use to create my art, that is why sometimes I am unrecognizable in my own works.” More about her work can be found here.

Shizuko Shichishima

A graduate of the College of Bunka Joshi (an art and craft school) in Tokyo. Shizuko Shichishima has been creating hand-crafted traditional Japanese ceramics for the past 30 years. After moving to the United States, she became involved in jewelry making and needle work, while continuing with her passion for the ceramic arts. She has been shown at various galleries throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and participates in approximately 30 fairs and festivals every year. More about her work can be found here.

Larry Stephenson

Larry Stephenson, a watercolor artist from Andover, Kansas, has created two bodies of work: Toyz featuring antique toys and the other featuring angling art and fly fishing paintings. The retro and whimsical elements are unmistakable in his work which clearly communicate his passions for toys and fishing. It is a definitively original representation of American pop culture. More about his work can be found here.

Julie Stutznegger

One of this year’s returning award winners, Julie Stutznegger has been working with stained glass since 1995, and has been fusing glass since 2005. Her glass artwork comprises multiple layers of glass powder applied to sheet glass and then, through several firings, the layers dissolve into and around each other, and form unique results. As she notes in her biographical statement: “I love the textural possibilities of working with glass powder. … One of my favorite things about working with powdered glass is the spontaneity. The reaction of powder in the kiln can be anticipated and controlled (to a certain point) prior to firing, but it will often do what it pleases when left alone in the kiln. The grainy, jagged, scaly, or wrinkly surface that emerges from the kiln is sometimes a surprise, but again and again, I marvel at the beautiful behavior of glass.” More about her work can be found here.