Ingenuity never is scarce when it comes to the final student projects at the Book Arts Studio at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library. For example, ‘Hubbub,’ was an imaginative collaboration of two sisters – Amber and Hayley Heaton – who produced a book of poems that replace simplistic, unrealistic abecedarian sentences (e.g., ‘A’ is for ‘apple) with emotionally engaging representations (e.g., ‘B’ is for ‘bumble bug’) that clearly signal broader, more familiar spectrums of life experience. Letterpress printed, the book incorporates the classic elements of wood block and type, rubber-based ink, linocuts, and hand-sewn binding. Produced in 2004, the book is still available in limited edition through several boutique sellers.

Some projects emerge as unique tributes to the memory of a loved one, such as a book containing meticulously executed Xerox transfers of old photographs representing the home property of a student’s great-grandparents. And, yet other projects defy conventional 2-D forms. Tiny Chinese scrolls tied with a ribbon are placed in an equally tiny test tube. Another is a four-letter-word scramble flexagon. In the just concluded semester-long letterpress course, each student was expected to produce a printed, folded piece of paper which then would be added to an origami masu class portfolio box.

While students are encouraged to create works simple enough to produce multiple copies for their peers and teachers in the program with the same precision employed in the prototype, the process is complex for the decisions it involves – paper, color, size, text placement, visual intent and iconic effect, to name a few. In fact, every course assignment hinges on the same precepts of how form fulfills function: “The folds must contribute to the communication of the idea” or “the book format should be instrumental in the communication of your intent.”

The University of Utah’s book arts program, which includes the fine-press limited edition releases of Red Butte Press, has gained an excellent reputation since the press was established in 1984 and the course activities were initiated in 1995. Marnie Powers-Torrey, managing director and instructor, played a prominent role in the founding of the College Book Art Association in 2008, which now has 19 member institutions from around the country and will be holding a conference next month in San Francisco.

The state board of regents also is expected to approval the school’s book arts curriculum as an academic certificate program. Barely more than a handful of similarly accredited undergraduate programs in this discipline exist around the country.

“I am an educator and a printer who, along with my colleagues at the Book Arts Program and Red Butte Press, both impulsively and philosophically believe in the lasting power of the printed image and word,” Powers-Torrey says, adding that as the digital age continues to be immersed in our lives, the enrollment of students and community members in the program courses has increased steadily.

The scope of expression evidenced in the student projects should hearten anyone who worries about the side effects of total digital immersion. Passion and personal engagement underscore the hunger to become, as Powers-Torrey explains, a modern renaissance person who values the skills to analyze critically, distill context, and synthesize the elements of form, content, and design. The art of creating a book form parallels the writing process in every manner.

Perhaps, as Krozser has written, we’ll be able to distinguish which stories can be chronicled in every imaginable format, which stories lend themselves best to the digital media, and, finally, those which are best suited for the pace of turning the page in a beautifully crafted printed book.

Recently, Art Spiegelman, in an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, explained, “So, if I need a textbook that’s going to be out of date because of new technological inventions, you’re better off having it where you can download the supplements or the update. If you’re going to read a quick mystery model to keep you amused when you’re traveling, it’s fine.”

In other words, it’s not a question of business viability. It is a question of lasting artistic value – for an individual who decides which books will be essential to his or her lifetime personal library. That is the impetus of the Red Butte Press, which has produced exceptional limited edition works that steadily increase in value. Many of these books, which often take two to three years to produce, start at $650 and some editions run upwards of $1,500. Many runs only include between 100 and 150 copies with a few running up to 400.

One of the most stunning examples is ‘Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known,’ a collection of poems by Nigerian poet and playwright Wole Solynka who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. In this edition, the poems – originally published in 2002 – are set in an edition featuring a quartet of original color woodcuts by Robert Kleinschmidt, an artist who has deeply inspired Powers-Torrey’s commitment to the art form. The book’s unusual wire edge binding also features boards covered in Japanese Kyosei-shi handmade paper. A small number of deluxe editions also were produced that are covered in suede.

Red Butte Press releases always bring together artists from around the nation as well as the globe. Victoria Hindley, who designed the Samarkand book, also led the project for an edition of Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Firebird’s Nest’ which features four linoleum cuts designed by Alfredo Benavidez Bedoya, an Argentinean printmaker. Bound in yellow ostrich leather, the drop-spine box, designed by hand as well, is covered in black silk.

When ‘Something Lived, Something Dreamed: Urban Design and The American West’ featuring an original essay about sustainable architectural design by William McDonough, was released in 2004, the production involved more than 50 skilled artists from six states with Hindley once again serving as designer. The cotton paper came from an Italian mill while the book covers were made from a single sycamore tree that had been reclaimed from an urban construction site.

Two Utah woodworkers fabricated the covers, which also featured recycled aluminum, while the text was printed on a handpress dating to the middle 19th century. The book, which came to 125 copies in the production run, included hand-inked letterpress monoprints by Chris Stern and hand binding.

The book was acknowledged with many awards including the American Institute of Graphic Arts 50/50 honors in 2006 as one of the 50 best designed books of the year. More significantly, McDonough’s essay, which has not been published elsewhere, has formed the foundation for many discussions around the country for gaining a seminal understanding of the form and function of sustainable urban design.

Red Butte Press selections always emphasize the extensive collaborative nature of the work. At the centenary of Wallace Stegner’s birth, Red Butte Press released a book containing the author’s famed essay ‘To A Young Writer,’ as well as new text by Wendell Berry and Lynn Stegner. The book’s production was a prominent choice as the University holds Stegner’s archives and the project involved collaborators not only at the school but also from Indiana, New York, and California.

This was the second Stegner issue by the press, which released a 1995 edition of his ‘Wilderness Letter.’ The centenary edition run, which included three original engravings by Barry Moser and was bound in wood, cloth, and calfskin, was limited to 125 copies.

As for the students, the book arts studio provides an instructive change of pace from the now-conventional digital environment where pressing buttons and clicking cursors facilitate information gathering and distribution. Located on the fourth floor of the library, the studio invites students to calibrate and finesse their tactile and physical movement capabilities, working with equipment that demands a firm yet gentle lift, jerk, or press.

Depending upon the required skill level of the course, students set letterpress type, where each character is a unique piece of metal, by hand. The studio has gradually amassed a collection of rare fonts and styles that otherwise might have ended up in scrap heaps or in storage lockers to be forgotten. Students respect how old-school technology gains a new lease on life as a form of artistic expression.

The book arts program, which received one of the city’s Mayor’s Artist Awards at this year’s Utah Arts festival, has been a primary force in establishing a worthwhile presence for the hands-on printing enterprise in Salt Lake City and in the surrounding area. These include Sycamore Street Press, Birdbrain Press, Saltgrass Printmakers, and other numerous independent artists who’ve established their creative livelihood throughout the country. Staff members also have worked extensively with the Utah Humanities Council and other organizations on a variety of public festival programming.

The four films, running an average of 20 minutes, were made by young filmmakers – almost all of them in their teens and some in their early college years. Their work will be premiered Nov. 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.

As noted previously in this blog, the most impressive aspect of the PitchNic program is how these young filmmakers continuously improve upon the work of their predecessors. The PitchNic brand has been crafted exceptionally well. Documentaries reflect a mature, sensitive treatment that belies the age of their storytellers while fictional narratives — whether through comedy, romance, slice-of-life reality or drama — show a deft hand in orchestrating important literary elements such as irony, metaphor, and epiphany.

Past PitchNic films have been featured at festivals including Sundance, Los Angeles International Film Festival, Utah Arts Festival’s Fear No Film Competition, Barcelona Television Festival, Seattle International Film Festival and others as well as cable networks including HBO.

As in other years, the young filmmakers set the bar for creative enterprise unprecedentedly high as in ‘River’s End,’ a fictional short story by Mikkel Richardson, Anna Berbert, and Rodrigo Arroyo. Based in part on a short story Richardson wrote about his experience in seeing a childhood friend drift away without ever really learning why such distance came between them, the film follows a 12-year-old boy who runs away from home with his imaginary friend in hopes of reaching the seacoast. Covering four days, the story revolves around the tension, dissent, and challenge against the fictions all of us at one point or another confront within ourselves that masquerade as our alleged identities.

Josh Samson, a Spy Hop instructor who mentored the filmmakers involved with both fictional narrative shorts, says the students learn to deal directly with the frustrations and struggles involved with all elements of production from conceiving plausible ideas to working within their budgets and to casting and directing their actors. Samson and his colleague, Frank Feldman, the mentor for the pair of documentary films, set appropriate boundaries as mentors, encouraging the students to take full ownership for their projects. “When we see that they are clearly flustered, then we step in gently to give them a chance to regroup and subtly suggest what they might need to do to resolve a particular problem.”

In ‘River’s End,’ Richardson and his young colleagues found the first day of shooting quite problematic with the two young actors who had been cast. ‘On the second day of shooting, I took Josh’s suggestion and decided to get the kids to play and joke around with me for about 10 minutes,’ Richardson recalls. ‘And it worked because the actors then picked up on what we were trying to tell in this story.’

‘Delayed,’ the second fictional film, had its own challenges. The filmmakers – Emalie Ruffy and Rowan Eyzaguirre – originally hoped to open the film with a shot of a car on fire. ‘Unfortunately, when they found out that the shot could eat up nearly all of their budget, they settled on a showing a car broken down in the middle of nowhere,’ Samson explains. PitchNic’s major comedy offering for this year follows three rock musicians, whose trip to the biggest concert of their careers takes several incredible detours, including the kidnapping of the lead singer. The other two members meanwhile meet a strange cast of characters as they try hitchhike their way to safety and to rescue their bandmate.

Achieving integrity in the narrative is equally challenging for the two teams of documentary students. ‘The students bring great ideas to the table as well as a solidly mature outlook of the world,’ Feldman says. ‘However, they also learn to work through the experience and the struggles that the film they get might not be the one they originally hoped for when they pitched the topic.’ Such was the case in ‘Dinner’ – a film by Laela Omar, Erin Cole and James Hadden – which originally had hoped to chronicle the differences in family dinner rituals among several multicultural families.

On the other hand, the film goes to the most pervasive questions about why so many families find it so difficult – and even awkward – to sit together for dinner. In addition to featuring two families, the film includes interviews with a family counselor and Liz Edmunds, known as the Food Nanny for her books and television show which is part of Brigham Young University’s public television programming.

‘Freegans’ – known more widely as Dumpster divers – is the focus of the other PitchNic documentary film. However, the film turns the stereotypes of Dumpster divers on its head by asking sharp questions about wasteful consumerism. The young filmmakers – Mallory McDaniel, Connor Estes, and John Tatum – raise valid concerns about why companies such as Whole Foods and REI, who exert a good deal of brand-building effort to emphasize their sense of corporate social responsibility, relegate with alarming regularity significant quantities of good food and product to the trash. They also show that ‘freegans’ come from a broader demographic range than what is typically believed and that many share a common overarching concern about restoring a core ethical obligation to our behavior as consumers.

The 2010/2011 PitchNic program is generously supported by Zoo, Arts, and Parks of Salt Lake County, Salt Lake County Substance Abuse Prevention, the National Endowment for the Arts, Adobe Youth Voices, Zero Divide, The Broadband Technology Opportunity Program, The George and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation, the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Foundation, Salt Lake City Arts Council, and the Utah Division of Arts and Museums.

Tickets at $6.50 each are available online here, all ArtTix Office locations, or by calling (801) 355-ARTS.

Likewise, emphasizing that not every locally made food product is necessarily worthy of gold star treatment, Caputo regularly introduces participants to the producers behind names such as Creminelli, Snowy Mountain Sheep Creamery, Slide Ridge Honey, Epic Brewing Company, and others whose foodstuffs have captivated specialty food stores in and out of the United States.

Of course, tasting and cooking classes at the downtown and 15th-and-15th locations of Tony Caputo’s Food Market and Deli regularly sell out because the overall program offers a refreshing cost-friendly path to connoisseurship without the intimidating or alienating effects of a staid or stodgy approach that otherwise would match exclusivity with an out-of-the-ballpark price. Along with the meticulous background research that goes into each class, Caputo focuses on the face-to-face interactions between producers and customers as leading to a more effective way of comprehending the true complexities and genuine goals of a food system that is not only known for being local but also for being sustainable and beneficial to the community.

The classes succeed because they serve a longer-term objective about building a resilient food culture in Utah that goes well beyond the obviously inherent retail advantages Caputo’s justifiably reaps from its education program. And, the classes continuously evolve to incorporate broader, more diverse, and more focused elements of tasting and cooking with the meats, cheeses, oils, vinegars, butters, chocolates, and salts so that increasing proportions of participants return for intermediate and advanced levels of experience. Francis Fecteau of Libation, Inc., offers supplemental wine education and, more recently, representatives of Epic Brewing Company have coordinated information about craft beer pairings with meats and cheeses.

Furthermore, the classes help establish an immensely useful baseline of trust where the personal interactions and connections between and among customers, producers, and retailers operate more effectively as a friendly, accessible expert system in lieu of the sterile, impersonal, and technically confusing realm of standard product certifications. Caputo and his staff understand that it’s not merely satisfactory to have the right attitudes and values to make customers want to learn more about these extraordinary food items. Instead, it is better to foster a mutually adaptive capacity on both sides of the transaction. That is, customers are inspired to try these products as well as broaden and diversify their repertoire as food consumers. Likewise, producers and retailers learn what drives the impetus for shared values and attitudes. They also learn what customers expect from these products, what they currently know (or don’t know) about how these products are made, and what they think about the products.

So much valuable information is gathered from classes that could never be generated from an advertising-driven promotion or marketing campaign that uses one-time surveys or focus groups to gather opinions and attitudes. The classes become the ideal vehicle for reaching as many demographic groups as possible that are taking a greater interest in the quality as well as responsible production methods for the food they eat.

Along with the live music Troy Petersen offers each Friday at the 15th and 15th location, the classes have been the perfect medium for reaching out to neighboring residents as well as students, faculty, and staff from the nearby campuses of The University of Utah and Westminster College. “Not only is it a great way for customers to go for the red pill and sample a goat’s milk or sheep’s milk cheese for the first time and pair it with a wine they might never have tried before,” Petersen explains, “but it also is a great excuse for neighbors to walk down to the store and get together.”

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,” Caputo explains. For example, the classes are designed to help consumers navigate with an increasing sense of confidence the imposing selection of olive oils or vinegars available. Rightly so, Caputo and Petersen break the products into manageable categories ranging from least expensive to most expensive, paralleling the best ways to use them.

Caputo’s usually offers four classes per month (mainly Mondays at 7:15 p.m. at the downtown location and Tuesdays at 7:15 p.m. at 15th and 15th, with some exceptions). The cost per class is a highly reasonable $25 with a wine pairing available at an extra $15.

One class remains in September – a tasting session for olive oils and vinegars on Monday, Sept. 26, at the 15th and 15th store. Fall classes include introductory sessions for chocolate as well as cheese and wine. Others are focused on holiday themes including Italian cooking as well as a comprehensive VIP shopping and tasting tour of the store. Cooking classes, offered less frequently and which cost $20 more than the basic class rate, include a full meal. Private classes for groups also are available. For more information, see here.

Adjacent to the City Library, on the north end of 200 East on the Utah Arts Festival grounds is a pavilion housing at any point during the day between 20 and 40 individuals. They are festival visitors waiting eagerly in line (like Utahns love to do) learning and mastering the skill to evolve their technique.

They’ve heard the instructions over and over, paid their money, and are envisioning exactly what they are going to do when it is finally their turn. This isn’t life or death but, for some, it seems like a once-in-a-lifetime experience being finally realized. These men, women and children are amateur glass blowers, and any festival visitor still has time to share the experience through the festival’s final day.

Prairie Dog Glass is offering anyone a chance to become a glass artist, giving you the creative power in choosing your own colors, creating your own design, and learning about the process and peculiarities of working glass. Two master glass-blowers are on site to oversee and instruct participants while they create glass paperweights with impossibly unique and intricate designs.

Prairie Dog Glass from Santa Fe, New Mexico has brought 200 pounds of glass to the festival, which they heat to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit until it is a glass puddle inside a portable crucible. Glassblowers use a ‘hot-rod’ to pick up some glass and participants roll it in alloy-enhanced pigments, stick it in ‘the glory hole’ which heats it to 1,000 degrees.

Then, folks like you and me can pinch, pull, and twist their material before it is sealed in a globe of glass. Final shaping and labeling occurs before the piece is put in the annealer, the fractionating refrigerator that brings the glass temperature from 1000 degrees to 100 degrees overnight and the personalized paperweight is ready for pick up the next day at 10 a.m.

A customized motorcycle trailer holds all of the equipment, which was fabricated by the blowers. ‘Its purpose was to show collectors and children the process – from A-to-Z – and appreciate what goes into the art,’ Ira Lujan, master glassblower, says.

‘We expect to help 200 people to be a glass blower through the event,’ says Kyle Prinkey, the scientist and businessman for Prairie Dog. ‘I do this so that the artists can focus on the glass.’ He also is the one who stays up all night to check on the glass, to make sure it remains stable.

‘This medium is so limitless with what you can do with it, I have so many ideas,’ Lujan explains. ‘But I’m somewhat of a purist and avoid molds. I stick strictly to the best nature of it.’

Masterpieces by Prairie Dog Glass artists also are available for sale at the pavilion. Wells Fargo has subsidized the costs of materials for the first 40 people per day to enable participants to create their own artwork for $15.

Others beyond the first 40 will pay $30, still a highly reasonable deal.

Workshops, which last for two hours, are held daily from 2 to 4 p.m., and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

For more information about Prairie Dog Glass, see here. And for the festival’s remaining events through tomorrow (Sunday) see here.

Kudos to Bombshell Music and Media for a great series of webisodes.

Continue to follow The Selective Echo’s wall-to-wall coverage with my colleague and assistant editor, Max Dahl.

Making Tracks to the Utah Arts Festival from Utah Arts Festival on Vimeo.

Among the highlights include author Dorothee Kocks will be sharing excerpts from her new novel ‘The Glass Harmonica: A Sensualist’s Tale’ which will take place Saturday, June 25, at 4 p.m. on The Big Mouth Stage. (See here for a Selective Echo featured.)

Members of the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, which has set the national standard in storytelling, will share tales in two sessions – Saturday and Sunday, June 25 and 26, at 1 p.m. in the Salt Lake Community College Writing Center on the festival campus.

The festival also is pairing with NightFlight Comics on Library Square to hold three workshops on creating comic books which will be held by Richard Jenkins, who created the Sky Ape graphic novel series and has written short-story comics as well as other serialized graphic novels. Jenkins is well-known for his work with school districts throughout the United States.

There is no shortage of literary personalities for the Big Mouth Stage. The festival’s second-ever slam poetry competition, which saw an overflow crowd last year, will include Salt Lake City teams as well as the defending champion, SlamNUBA of Denver. The competition takes place Saturday, June 25, at 7:30 p.m.

The regular poetry slam event will have competitive rounds on Thursday, June 23, and Friday, June 24, at 7:30 p.m. and with the final slamoff on Sunday, June 26, at 7:30 p.m. A teem slam also will be held Saturday, June 25, at 3 p.m.

In addition, some of Salt Lake City’s best known slam poets will perform also on the Big Mouth Stage including Jesse Parent and Mike Dimitri. These poets are among those featured in ‘The Silhouettes,’ one of the nine short films eligible for the Utah Short Film of The Year Award, which is presented by Fear No Film. The 16-minute short premiered at Spy Hop Productions’ PitchNic program last fall.

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 was 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. Caldiero, whose latest book is ‘Poetry Is Wanted Here,’ will read Saturday, June 25, at 6 p.m.

Another prominent figure is Teresa Jordan, who will read Sunday, June 26, at 4:30 p.m. at the Big Mouth Stage. 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.

There also will be readings with Bond and Sara Caldiero as well as daily performances at 6:30 p.m. by Wise Guys Comedy.

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

And, budding writers of all ages can choose from a dozen hands-on writing workshops, also coordinated by SLCC staffers. These include programs for writing about food, civil rights and community issues as well as approaching micro-fiction, digital storytelling, and non-rhyming poetry.

Kids’ workshops also are tailored for interactive activities. For example, children will be given a painted rock and asked to produce a short written piece. Likewise, in another session, kids will be given magnets to come up with ‘banana haikus.’ Another session deals with creating DaDa poetry.

Last year brought nearly 75 writers to the second 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 24, 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 24, is $10 for the IronPen competition and $30 for the Ultra IronPen portion. For more information, call (801) 957-2192 or visit here.

Judging is based on youth and adult categories and winners will read selections from their entries Sunday, June 26, at 2 p.m. at the Big Mouth Stage.

The SLCC Community Writing Center at the Library Square, directed by Andrea Malouf, has been a major base of support in developing the festival’s literary arts program. The center, which has built a strong pioneering reputation in the country for its outreach activities, has partnerships with more than 40 community organizations and has been particularly instrumental in helping individuals prepare themselves for college work who otherwise might not have considered the opportunity.

For more information about the festival’s literary arts program, see here.

And, continue to follow The Selective Echo for wall-to-wall coverage and previews of the festival. The Selective Echo is joined by Max P. Dahl, an intern journalist from Utah State University, who is the blog’s assistant editor.

Utah Arts Festival – Random Acts of Art. Yarn Bombing! from Utah Arts Festival on Vimeo.

The first Utah Arts Festival in 1977 featured 55 artists and 43 performers. Known originally as the Salt Lake Festival of the Arts, the current name took hold in 1980. In 2011, the UAF is stronger than ever. It ranks 14th among the top 100 fine arts fairs, according to the Art Fair SourceBook. More than 600 artists applied this year with slightly more than one out of every four accepted.

GRAND PREVIEW

The 35th anniversary of the Utah Arts Festival can be summed up in one word: blockbuster. Every major arts and cultural venue is larger than ever with new artists, performers, activities, and interactive workshops. The artist marketplace will have a record-breaking 159 artists including 55 newcomers and 49 from Utah.

Prairie Dog Glass, a mobile glass blowing studio from Santa Fe, New Mexico, will be on site for demonstrations. Also, glass art workshops will include members from The Glass Art Guild of Utah. Knitters also are featured this year with the Random Acts of Art project, where groups of knitters, including festival executive director Lisa Sewell as well as members of Art Access/VSA Utah, have been meeting to stitch covers for light posts, parking meters and trees.

A grand knitting installation is being revealed today on Washington Square in downtown SLC to coincide with World-Wide Knit-in-Public Day. The Utah Watercolor Society will be in the City Library urban room on the main floor for demonstrations and opportunities for patrons to try their hand at painting.

To mark the milestone, all festival records, dating to the first festival in 1977, are now archived in the special collections department of The University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library. Some of the items as well as more than 80 photographs will be featured in the ‘1 Through 34: Revisiting the Utah Arts Festival History’ exhibition, which will be housed on the fourth floor gallery of the City Library on Library Square. The exhibition, which opens June 23 and will be available through Aug. 5, comprises seven panels, each representing a five-year period of the festival’s history as well as six display cases highlighting iconic memorabilia from the festival.

Concurrent with the archival exhibition will be ’35,’ featuring new works by six young Utah artists – all born in the same year of the festival’s founding, give or take a few years – that signal the next generation of creative expression that will become familiar to festival goers.

In its ninth year, the Fear No Film shorts festival is including a screening of seven comedy shorts for children in the Art Yard. The Literary Arts venue, along with its teen poetry slam competition and the Wasatch IronPen competition, will present a workshop where participants will learn the art of comic books with Richard Jenkins, creator of the Sky Ape graphic novel series.

Music headliners represent some of the most widely respected names in rock, blues, bluegrass, Afro-Cuban jazz, and New Orleans funk. Three composers with deep ties to the Western United States will present world premieres of music commissioned specifically for the festival.

After a ten-year absence from the festival, Utah’s nationally known Ballet West will perform every evening during the four-day run, thanks to funding from a $15,000 grant the festival received last fall from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Street Theater venue will feature Aerial Arts of Utah, which uses the City Library’s exceptional Crescent Wall as its performing canvas, along with SLAPercussion, an ensemble that works with buckets, plastic tubing, railroad spikes, and bottles. Samba Fogo, the SLC-based Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian dance and musical troupe, will bring, once again, a fiery carnival touch to the festival after a string of 2009 performances in the Library Square round that packed hundreds upon hundreds of spectators in every available space surrounding the stage.

Along with activities featuring DJ skills and graffiti, the Urban Arts Yard will house the local Copper Palate Press for hands-on printmaking and screening as well as Higher Ground Learning for interactive sessions about guerrilla art forms and members of the 337 Project who will help participants make custom trucker hats.

Local author Dorothee Kocks will share and perform excerpts from her new novel ‘The Glass Harmonica: A Sensualist’s Tale.’

With a forecast of sunny days and temperatures in the upper 80s and a slate that literally has something for everyone, attendance will undoubtedly challenge last year’s record-breaking mark of more than 82,000 during the festival, which runs from Thursday, June 23, through Sunday, June 26. All events will be at the City Library Square and Washington Square.

And, to keep a good handle on this enormous cultural undertaking, there is a festival guide app for all of this as the UAF offers its second ever iPhone application, available for free from the Apples iTunes store. Last year, the initial offering resulted in more than 1,400 downloads.

As always, festival organizers, led by executive director Lisa Sewell, remain savvy to current economic circumstances, ensuring the events are comfortably tailored for festival guests’ pocketbooks and wallets and for those increasingly concerned about how individual actions have an impact upon maintaining an ecologically friendly and sustainable environment.

The celebration of Utah’s growing artists’ colonies is manifested in many ways during the festival. For example, the ‘35’ exhibit – curated by Utah artist and Shawn Rossiter, who also edits the local art e-zine ’15Bytes,’ comprises a variety of works in media including painting, printmaking, sculptural mixed media, photography, sound and video. The invited artists are Ashley Knudsen Baker, Orem; Namon Bills, Spanish Fork; Jared Latimer, Ephraim, and Chadwick Tolley, Rosi Hayes, and Michael Ryan Handley, Salt Lake City.

ARTISTS’ MARKETPLACE

As customary, this year’s artist marketplace will not disappoint in diversity, featuring everything from pottery in both serious and whimsical forms, rich hand-made and hand-woven fibers, jewelry in glass and metal forms, oil paintings in serious and comical representations, scenic watercolors, clever toys, and photography in exceptionally executed prints and originals.

Among the invited artists – all from Utah – to be featured include Liza Julien (2-D mixed media), Amber DeBirk (glass), William Hedgecock (metalwork [pictured]), and Harold Wallace (photography).

Returning award-winning artists include Toby Mercer (Kalispell, Montana, 2-D mixed media), Dave Borba (Salt Lake City, 3-D mixed media), Yan Inlow (Alamedia, California, fiber), Brett Varney (Sechelt, British Columbia, drawing), Juli Adams (Seattle, painting), Mark Breithaupt (Phoenix, sculpture), and Trevin Prince (Logan, Utah, painting [pictured]).

MUSIC COMMISSIONS

Along with the new artists will be the premiere performances of three musical commissions including a jazz commission, started in 2008 to supplement the classical composer commission, which was started in 1991, and the chamber music commission, established in 2006 and sponsored by the Mandel Foundation.

Winners include Christopher Stark, a Montana native who has won several nationally known commissions and is finishing his doctorate at Cornell University, (far left, pictured) for ‘Promontories: After Three Photos by Ansel Adams’ for chamber orchestra (Thursday, June 23, at 8:15 p.m. on the Festival Stage); Ethan Wickman, an assistant professor of music at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire with strong ties to Utah’s music scene, will present the chamber composition premiere, ‘Winter’s Burst’ (Saturday, June 25, at 4 p.m. in the City Library Auditorium), and David Featherstone, a percussionist and composer who completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Utah, who is the fourth recipient of the festival’s jazz (Friday, June 25, at 8:30 p.m. on the Festival Stage).

MUSIC AND PERFORMERS’ HIGHLIGHTS

Kinetix and Young Dubliners: This year’s opening headliners on June 23 include Kinetix, a relatively new high-energy rock band from Denver that is gaining attention rapidly, will go on at 8:30 p.m. on the Amphitheater Stage.

Meanwhile, with almost two decades under its belt, the Young Dubliners, which was formed in the Los Angeles pub circuit by Dublin natives Keith Roberts and former member Paul O’Toole, will surely send festival fans into the popular ‘jig pits’ with their blend of Irish sounds and meaty rock jams when the band goes on the Amphitheater Stage at 9:45 p.m.

Ronnie Baker Brooks: Following in his father’s unforgettable footsteps (Lonnie), this young Chicago musician is adding his own generation’s mark to the legacy of Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, and others with inflections of soul, hip-hop and funk. He will perform Friday, June 25, at 9:45 p.m. on the Amphitheater Stage.

Maraca: Born in Havana, world-class virtuoso flautist Orlando ‘Maraca’ Valle is perhaps the best-known ambassador of Cuban popular dance music and Afro-Cuban jazz. He will perform Saturday, June 25, at 9:45 p.m. on the Amphitheater Stage.

Incendio: Hailing from Los Angeles, this Latin world fusion guitar ensemble offers a genius palette of musical influences counting Weather Report, Jimi Hendrix, XTC, Paco de Lucia, Buddha Bar and Joni Mitchell, to name a few. The ensemble will perform Saturday, June 25, at 9:45 p.m. on the Festival Stage.

Big Sam’s Funky Nation: Fans of HBO’s ‘Treme’ will readily recognize ‘Big Sam’ Williams, bandleader and trombonist from New Orleans. His band will close out the blockbuster festival with energetic, pulsing jazz with horn-heavy grooves that will reverberate long after the curtain comes down on this history-making event after the performance, which is Sunday, June 26, at 9:45 p.m. on the Amphitheater Stage.

Blame Sally: This all-woman San Francisco folk rock group has opened for Ani DiFranco and Roseanne Cash, launched a national radio campaign covering both AAA and non-commercial stations and has reached an audience of millions on XM Satellite Radio’s ‘Starbuck’s XM Café.’ This group will be a part of the Festival Stage lineup on Sunday, June 26, at 8 p.m.

Del McCoury Band: With a career spanning six decades whose music has touched everyone from Vince Gill to Phish and to Elvis Costello, McCoury released his first album in 1968 and became member of the Grand Ole Opry in 2003. The band’s latest release is a collaboration with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band called ‘America Legacies.’ The band closes out the Festival Stage on Sun, June 26, at 9:45 p.m.

OTHER FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS

Local Music – More than 400 local musicians auditioned for spots on the festival’s extraordinary schedule and there will be more than 60 acts on five stages. Among the top acts will be Joshua Payne Orchestra (Friday, June 24, 10:15 p.m., Festival Stage), Fictionist (Saturday, June 25, 9 p.m., Park Stage), and The Rubes (Sunday, June 26, 9 p.m.). The UAF Youth Rock Ensemble featuring the best local teen musicians from Music Garage, Rest 30 Records, School of Rock and Wasatch Music Coaching Academy will perform Thursday, June 23, at 4 p.m. on the Park Stage.

Just Right – Works by 17 Utah artists, which have been curated by the Art at the Main store in the City Library Urban Room, are featured in an ongoing exhibition that runs through July 9.

The Art Yard – with the theme ‘Art is Elemental ‘ – will be open every day for children during the festival until 9 p.m. Along with the first children’s Fear No Film screenings, the venue also will feature the Target Mad Hatter interactive art project along with other make-and-take projects coordinated by Art Access/VSA Utah, Red Butte Garden, Salt Lake Art Center, Tracy Aviary, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and the Visual Art Institute. Also, returning is the Instrument Petting Zoo coordinated by the Summerhays Music Center, along with kids’ writing workshops in the Salt Lake Community College Writing Center.

Sixty-five independent short films from directors across the country and the world will mark the ninth annual Fear No Film offerings, rich in innovative programming based on the Nine Muses of Greek mythology. Nine films will compete in the 2010 Utah Short Film of the Year Competition. The lineup includes 15 films from Utah, 30 from other states in the nation, and 20 from 14 countries including four from New Zealand.

Two of the most recent Grand Jury Prize winners are back with new films. Canada’s Lyle Pisio, who won for his nine-minute animated short ‘The Empress,’ returns with ‘Wrecking Ball,’ also an animated piece set in a bar but, this time, the bartender fantasizes about what he would like to do to his customers. Eric Wobma, who won the Grand Jury Prize in 2009, is back with the exceptional 26-minute short ‘Oi’Clowns – An Homage To Federico Fellini.’ There were more than 400 submissions for this year’s slate.

Back for a fourth year, small plate gourmet offerings once again will be available at the festival’s Epicuriosity Tent, designed by Robert ‘Sully’ Sullivan of Utah Food Services and prepared by student chefs from the Art Institute of Salt Lake City. Also, Uinta Brewing Company has crafted Arts Fest Amber Ale especially for the festival. In addition, the brewery’s Crooked Line beers will be available for tastings as well as pairings with Epicuriosity dishes. Twenty other culinary vendors will provide a wide variety of foods during the festival.

Art Attack 5K run will be held Saturday, June 25, at 7:45 a.m. at Sugarhouse Park. The event, now in its 18th year, is expected to raise at least $15,000. More than 450 runners participated last year. Registration will be open until midnight June 23.

TICKET INFORMATION

Festival gates open at noon and close at 11 p.m. each day. Admission rates are the same as last year. Adult admission is $10 at the gate and $7 in advance. Adults 65 and over are admitted at $5. Children 12 and under are admitted free. Four-day passes are available for $30 and a ‘Y’all Come Back Pass,’ available at the exit gates, entitles guests to a 2-for-1 admission on a return visit – ideal considering the extensive breadth and depth of activities this year.

For those going to the festival Thursday and Friday between noon and 3 p.m., admission is $5. Discounts are available for those who ride their bikes to the festival.

Detailed schedules are available here.

And, look to The Selective Echo and to the Utah Arts Festival Web site throughout the next nine days for daily features and announcements about festival events.

And, stay tuned to The Selective Echo for wall-to-wall coverage and previews of the festival continuing this week and will run daily June 18-26. The Selective Echo is joined by Max P. Dahl, an intern journalist from Utah State University, who is the blog’s assistant editor.

Copper Palate Press from Utah Arts Festival on Vimeo.

And, in addition to its basic tasting class, which explores regional and farm-specific differences in the flavors and aromatics of coffee, the shop has added an ‘Understanding Espresso’ class for intermediate and more advanced connoisseurs of coffee. The basic coffee tasting class will be offered June 9 and June 23 while the new espresso class will run June 16 and June 30. Each class, which costs $20 and runs generally an hour or so, starts at 7 p.m. at the shop, located at 249 East 400 South in the street level of the Stoneground Restaurant building. Of course, all classes are held at Caffe d’bolla’s siphon bar counter, again the only one of its kind in the state.

The classes underscore the marriage of art and science in what constitutes a perfect cup of coffee or shot of espresso. Participants in the basic class will sample two coffees and will receive a good interactive primer on what to look for when tasting coffee. The espresso sessions provide a compact yet comprehensive introduction that covers the characteristics of bean selection, freshness, and roast parameters as well as the chemistry and skill behind the brewing process.

Naturally, the most important elements focus on the skills of baristas which can make or break the tasting experience for new as well as experienced coffee lovers. Owners John and Yiching Piquet have spent many years of painstaking practice to improve continuously their capacity to make an outstanding cup of coffee.

Registration fills up quickly as space is extremely limited. For more information, see here. Also, look for future class announcements above.