However, the Swiss-born artist should not be underestimated because of her easy propensity for whimsy touches and occasional silliness. Her work, rich in vibrant and lush colors, resists the anti-chromatic impulses of several major postwar European art movements. Yet, it also resists the tendency of absolutism readily adopted by the ultra-serious individual artist who sees himself (or herself) as the rigid authority of aethesticisim.

In the latest installment of the Creativity in Focus series, sponsored by the Utah Film Center and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA), ‘The Color of Your Socks: A Year with Pipilotti Rist,’ directed by Michael Hegglin, is a thoroughly entertaining crisply-paced romp showing the artist’s preparation for a major installation at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.

The film will be screened in a free, public program Friday, Jan. 13, at 7 p.m. at the UMOCA’s auditorium.

The 52-minute documentary follows the preparations for ‘Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)’ which opened in November of 2008 at MOMA. Viewers catch the significance of the film’s title at the 48-minute mark when MOMA’s security guards ask the artist how they should handle any visitors who resist the polite instructions to remove their shoes so they can enter on the white-carpet section of the installation. In her characteristic good-natured tone, Rist says they should say something like being curious about the ‘color of your socks.’

The documentary underscores Rist’s capacity for the type of engagement that resounds consistently throughout her work. She eagerly invites the cameras to chronicle the problem-solving details that go into her widely praised video installations. There are a few moments, too, where viewers see how the artist works around the various limitations and logistical issues posed by the host museum.

The MOMA video exhibit, which took the museum’s conservation department 93 hours to copy, included a 16-minute video loop with images rising 25 feet and a carpeted sculpture in the form of a sitting island. However, viewers familiar with Rist’s work go well beyond the most obvious signs of pleasure and whimsical décor to see how the artist cleverly transforms the museum’s space where spectators literally can pour their body out in how they see the exhibit not only within their own intimate boundaries but also in the way they potentially interact with others. As Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine’s senior art critic, wrote at the time of the exhibit:

‘Shoes and coats are everywhere. People lie around, lean on walls, sleep and sprawl in groups on the floor and couch. On one of my visits, the well-known painter Gary Stephan drifted by and said, “I wish I had some ganja.” This is museum as hallucination, opium den, Lotus Land, cubbyhole and pleasure dome. Call it Trance Central station.’

Perhaps the most meaningful take-away from Rist’s work is that artists – and literally each of us – should never hesitate to liberate ourselves from unnecessary fears, even if the results turn out to be a mixed bag of successes and failures. That theme is most prominent in ‘Pepperminta,’ Rist’s first full-length feature film about a young woman, played by the same actress who appears in the video installation portrayed in the documentary.

The film follows Pepperminta, bedecked in a motley-colored drum major’s uniform, who gathers up a colorful troupe of apostles as they mischievously upend the gray, grim sensibilities of authority figures in a European city. Unashamedly silly, the film nevertheless reinforces precisely the artistic statement that is so evident in ‘The Color of Your Socks’ documentary.

For more information, see here and here.

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.

ARTIST AWARDS

Four artists received Best in Show honors, which means they will be automatically invited to the 2012 Utah Arts Festival and will have their booth fees waived. The winners are (photos below in order starting from top left):

Lisa Telling Kattenbraker (Olympia, Washington, Fiber), (Salt Lake Gallery Association selection). For more information about her work, see here.

Larry Richmond/Peggy Kondo (Bellingham, Washington, Ceramics), (Festival Board Members selection). For more information about their work, see here.

Roderick Stevens (Sierra Vista, Arizona, Painting), (Artist Marketplace Jury selection). For more information about his work, see here.

James Zheng (Alhambra, California, Photography), (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 2012 Utah Arts Festival without having to submit to the jury selection process. They are (photos below in order starting from top left):

Charles Phillips/Maia Leisz (Sagle, Idaho, Painting), (Salt Lake Gallery Association selection). For more information about their work, see here.

Steve Davis (Eugene, Oregon, Metalwork), (Festival Board Members selection). For more information about his work,contact here.

Richard Curtner (Cathedral City, California, 2-D Mixed Media), (Artist Marketplace Jury selection). For more information about his work, see here.

Robert Erickson (Nevada City, California, Woodworking), (Sponsor Jury selection). For more information about his work, see here.

The People’s Choice Award went to Paul Counts (San Marcos, California, Glass). For more information about his work, contact him here.

LITERARY AWARDS

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

ADULT CATEGORIES

Fiction

1st Place: Austen Diamond, ‘Forever with Picasso’
Honorable Mention: Rich Vosepka, ‘Artistic Relics in the Great Salt Lake Valley

Non-Fiction

1st Place: Dianne Lockard, ‘Grafitti on the Wall’
Honorable Mention: Nathan Cole, ‘Do You Need Anybody’

Poetry

1st Place: Eileen Olsen, ‘Between the Lines’
Honorable Mention: Lin Ostler, ‘Do-Over Dinner Party’

UltraPen Marathon

1st Place: Steve Proskauer, ‘Lonely Hearts Club Band’
Honorable Mention: Suzanne McDougal, ‘Oh, City of Salt’

YOUTH CATEGORIES

Fiction

1st Place: Zachary Kobrin, ‘Wall’
Honorable Mention: Ariana Cole, ‘Salt and Pepper’

Poetry

1st Place: Kari Olson, ‘Remember’
Honorable Mention: Bronwyn Stockton, ‘The Grafitti’

The top finishers in the Art Attack 5K and 1K races which were held yesterday (June 25) at Sugarhouse Park are:

MEN’S -5K

1st: Jason Utgaard (16:43.12)
2nd: Andy Mathis (18:58.57)
3rd: Robert Mueller (19:01.78)

WOMEN’S – 5K

1st: Sally Johnson (20:14.68)
2nd: Sarah Goldberg (20:25.61)
3rd: Marcella Pasaye (21:32.17)

KIDS – 1K

BOYS

1st: Ryker Adamson (04:04.75)
2nd: Parker Russon (04:18.72)
3rd: Anthony Zitto (04:59.31)

GIRLS

1st: Anna Roelofs (04:57.01)
2nd: Maya Connolly (05:27.17)
3rd: Eliah Rogers (05:48.49)

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.

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.

In music, the Paradise Garage opened in New York City. Kraftwerk’s ‘Trans Europe Express’ was released, setting up the evolution of hip hop. Time and Newsweek magazines carried articles about the emerging ‘punk’ subculture in England and the United States.

British artist Jamie Reid, using letters cut from newspaper headlines in the style of ransom notes, became famous for designing the album cover for ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.’

Meanwhile, in New York’s Tribeca, East Village and Soho districts as well as other large metropolitan areas around the country, graffiti artists and New Cinema pioneers, who worked in Super-8 film, collaborated extensively and organized unprecedented eclectic shows with music and video. Minimalism’s fleeting dominance in many cultural realms had given way to the realization that genre and classification no longer mattered.

A new generation of artists, who had grown up surrounded by near-constant images from film and television, created a fresh visual language that eventually would spread across the country in a dizzying accelerated pace once the Internet and other forms of digital media were perfected.

Indeed, for those born during that time, their frame of reference would be shaped in large and small ways by these developments. And, only now is that generation starting to enter its prime.

As organizers of the Utah Arts Festival were deciding how to mark the event’s 35th anniversary, more than a few suggested any special exhibition should include an artistic celebration along with an historical retrospective. However, organizers also did not want to replicate the Artists of Utah’s ‘35 x 35’ show which occurred in 2002 and again in 2009. The shows were essentially snapshots of the creative pulses driving the work of Utah artists who were under the age of 35. (PHOTO ABOVE: Michael Handley’s work, left; Jared Latimer’s work, right)

Shawn Rossiter, a Utah artist and editor of the art e-zine ‘15Bytes,’ took on the responsibility of curating the artistic half of the celebration exhibit. ‘Lisa Sewell [director of the festival] approached me about curating a show that would emphasize the festival’s emphasis on the future,’ he explains. ‘To her credit, rather than showcase established, big name artists, Lisa wanted to give some emerging artists a chance to reach the large crowds at the festival.’

The objective then was to document the rich, pluralistic character of Utah artists who are reshaping traditional forms as well as generating new forms of expressions that fuse abstraction and representation so seamlessly. The result is the ’35’ exhibit, featuring the work of six young Utah artists (all 35, give or take a few months), which has turned out to be a ‘happy accident’, according to Rossiter. He adds that visitors who spend enough time with the exhibit will see the aesthetic and even thematic connections running through each artist’s work. (PHOTO ABOVE: Rosi Hayes’ work).

The exhibit opens June 23 in the fourth floor gallery of the City Library on Library Square as the companion to the ‘1 Through 34: Revisiting the Utah Arts Festival History’ exhibition, adjacent to the gallery. Both will be available through August 5. For more about the historical half of the exhibition, see here.

While there are no traditional landscape paintings, visitors will recognize Utah’s iconic topography and geographical features being represented in many of the works. Jared Latimer’s 5’ x 8’ paintings might appear initially as traditional landscape representations. However, several visual clues reveal the works depict digitally mapped images of the landscape – think Google Street View – that call for, as Latimer explains in his artist statement, the distortions and anomalies in a ‘digitally replayed world.’

A native of California who studied art at Brigham Young University (BYU) and the Pratt Institute, Latimer is director of the Central Utah Art Center in Ephraim.

Meanwhile, Rosi Hayes’ representation of land – ‘Salve Regina’ – comes in the form of a sound piece, which is a Gregorian chant more than 400 years old, and a collage of nine framed photos. Inspired by the imagery of female divinities including the deeply revered Black Madonna of Catholic Europe, Hayes says, in her artistic statement, the work ‘simultaneously describes the mute trauma that land bears here as well as the possibility of a dark divinity—a wordless awareness of something suppressed being re-seen, re-heard and so re-emergent.’

Born and raised in Utah, Hayes – a multidisciplinary artist and performer who works in sound, video, and photography – was commissioned in 2010 by the Battery Park City Authority to create a sound installation, ‘Hunger Song: a Lament / Amhrán an Ocrais: Caoineadh’ for the Irish Hunger Memorial in New York City.

Incorporating video, Michael Handley’s work follows an aesthetic arc similar to Hayes in terms of emancipating and powerful forms of expression that reject deeply entrenched norms about gender identity. A University of Utah graduate, he installed this spring a commissioned sculpture at the Leonardo Science and Art Museum that focuses on new ways of thinking about sustainability, architecture, photosynthesis and agriculture. He is a multidisciplinary artist who blends sculpture, performance, video and photography into his work.

Building upon the ‘Angels in Architecture’ show he curated last year at Art Access, Namon Bills moves painting and collage off the wall and mounts separate carved units of his mixed media work that can be described variously as altar pieces or cemetery statues and monuments. The work, comprising the central part of a larger installation he plans to complete in the near future, suggests the ways in which we think about death and how we commemorate those who have died. (PHOTO RIGHT: Namon Bills’ work)

Although he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in painting, Bills says he considers himself a mixed media artist who sees collage as the ‘perfect synthetic medium.’ He describes his process as trying ‘to create a layer of texture and color upon which to build. This gives me something to respond to instead of a sterile white background. I continue to build the image with layers of collage, drawing, printmaking and painting, sometimes sanding or using other reductive processes to break down and integrate layers.’

Ashley Knudsen Baker, a graduate of BYU and the University of Texas-San Antonio with an emphasis in printmaking, creates two-dimensional paintings but essentially flattens the three-dimensional forms of her subjects to the form dictated by the medium.

Much like a parent or teacher who shows a child or student how to fold and make creases so that a paper airplane can fly, she says her objective is to show that by learning how to conform or comply, only then can one fly on his or her own. As she writes in her artistic statement, the images focus on ‘forms that are both dissonant and harmonious; that integrate and break free from discipline.’

Land also is a strong element in Chad Tolley’s suite of narrative pieces that branches off from his typical work in etching and woodcut. At first glance, the works, with many strong metaphorical symbols for communicating a narrative arc, appear to be prints but on closer observation, they comprise individual meticulously constructed paper cutouts. As he indicates in his artist statement, ‘I hope to make connections, discover meaning and find universal themes. I attempt to create work that is literal enough to suggest meaning yet ambiguous enough that the viewer will construct his/her own.’ (PHOTO ABOVE: Chad Tolley’s work, far left; Ashley Knudsen Baker’s work, right)

A Missoula, Montana native, Tolley earned degrees from the University of Utah and University of Oregon and now lives with his wife and family in the East Millcreek area where he teaches at the Syracuse Arts Academy.

For more information, see here.

PHOTO CREDITS: Shawn Rossiter

As a Christmas present for an artist friend several years ago, Dave Borba produced an original wood carved, hand painted devil ventriloquist doll complete with a simple “jaw-dropping” lever. The gift – a vintage inspired piece of 3-D folk art completely handcrafted – deeply moved his friend, who originally had given Borba a ventriloquist doll that was missing its lower jaw in the hopes of having it repaired.

“He was really struck by it. He kept saying how much I had given back in return,” he recalls, “and he said I should start making molds and selling my work.”

From there, Borba began creating an unmistakably light-hearted series of dogs, devils, and skeletons – all in 3-D mixed media forms with a simple lever movement and made with the same sense of labor-intensive craftsmanship he took to heart from his grandfather, who had worked as a finish carpenter.

However, more importantly, for Utah Arts Festival visitors who see his work, Borba, who lives and works in Salt Lake City, emerges as a grateful, self-effacing spiritually satisfied artist. He enjoys every instance whenever a festival patron chuckles at the whimsy of his art – which also happens to carry curiously marked price tags – $197.65 and $213.45, for example – but more about that later.

As a crafty kid (his own words), Borba, now 35, remembers visiting the festival, thinking how much fun it would be to get involved. “I dabbled in a little bit of everything including woodworking because of my grandfather,” he explains. “Unfortunately, he was already quite elderly at the time but he was always happy to show me all of the hand tools he had used in his work.”

At 14, his grandfather died and Borba inherited his fly-fishing equipment and the young teenager started fishing. And, as he became more familiar with the hand carpentry tools his grandfather had left behind, he built a dory boat. The holistic experience nourished his spirituality and, in remembering the deep connection he had with his grandfather as a boy, he became more motivated to explore on his own the spontaneous interplay of craftsmanship and his internal creative spark.

As a result, Borba has two-full time careers. One is his “day job” which includes working as an industrial designer of light fixtures, a product photographer, and a graphic designer who develops marketing and promotional materials for a local manufacturer. The other is his art which started flourishing right after he gave his friend the first devil doll nearly three years ago.

His first show was the 2008 Utah Arts Festival. “When I was accepted, I realized that I only had 10 works in my inventory,” he recalls, “and so I worked constantly at night to make sure I would have enough to show in June.”

As much as he enjoyed the experience of his first festival show and the enthusiastic response he received especially from fellow exhibitors, Borba was careful to avoid burnout. “I kept reminding myself that I didn’t want to end up resenting my work,” he adds, explaining why he skipped doing any festivals in 2009.

In the meantime, his work popped up in the 2008 and 2009 Faces of Utah Sculpture shows and galleries around Salt Lake City including Studio 195, Blue Cockatoo, and the former Palmer’s Gallery.

Surrounded and involved directly with a world where technology and its advances continue to press forward with ever-increasing urgency, Borba says his art helps to reconnect with a simpler sense of enjoyment especially where personal interactions still matter in making meaningful connections. “The movable elements in my art go right back to my grandfather’s days when you didn’t need batteries,” he explains, “or the joy I’ve seen in kids in other countries who can take items from a trash pile and turn them into a kite that works.”

Going further, a recently added collection of 3-D works focuses on the heart, which Borba says express the most intimate experiences associated with the heart spanning joyful life and love to pain, disappointment, and even grief.

And, as for the prices, they are intended to emphasize further the intended whimsical effect of his art. “While you can’t be too serious with numbers, you still do have to account for the time and creative energy involved,” he says. “So, I try to ballpark what I need to make the necessary margins and then play with the numbers just enough to make it fun.”

The process of creating one piece is labor intensive at every step. Carving involves chiseling, sanding, sawing, and shaping with hand tools. Then comes the mold that uses high-quality silicone so every detail will be captured in the piece. It then is cast as Borba mixes a high quality three-part resin using water, catalyzed polyester and marble dust.

And, the second phase of real work begins as he paints each piece meticulously to a richly detailed bright and fresh finish. Reproductions are actually a misnomer, he says, adding that “the painting by hand ensures each piece is truly one of its kind and it helps to keep the ‘family’ of characters small and unique in character.” Borba then adds the effect of decades of weathering so the piece evokes a vintage appearance. He finishes the work by adding the hand-operated mechanical movements, either levers or pulleys.

Borba is one of 49 Utah artists this year among the 159 exhibitors in the Artists’ Marketplace. The number of local artists is never a guaranteed figure for the festival as the jury makes it selections with all physical address information removed from the portfolio submissions. The most important thing is that Borba’s work encapsulates the sense of a true artistic heart – the best reason for being at the festival.

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 which moves into full gear tomorrow. The Selective Echo is joined by Max P. Dahl, an intern journalist from Utah State University, who is the blog’s assistant editor.

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