The forthcoming show at galleryUAF, in the downtown offices of the Utah Arts Festival, is, in part, a fitting tribute to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

The three local artists — Patrice Showers Corneli, Matt Glass, and Colour Frazier Maisch — comprise distinct, yet elegantly interfaced artistic strains emanating from the compelling discourses of evolutionary biology and nature. Together, they remind us that understanding visual art is as much about exploring and reconciling what we see on our own terms — the composites of natural phenomena and abstract experiences that we, as individuals, interpret continuously throughout our lives.

The show will open during the monthly downtown gallery stroll Friday, Feb. 20, from 6 to 9 p.m. and will continue through March 13. The gallery, located at 230 South 500 West, #120, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays.

Corneli enjoys blending the experimental possibilities as an artist and as a University of Utah evolutionary biologist. “These two occupations arose naturally as I grew up in rural Illinois with six siblings, a bunch of goats, a Jersey cow, cats, dogs, and a huge garden,” she writes in her artistic statement. “I hung out in an old orchard, dug my toes into silky Illinois prairie dirt and watched clouds while lying in the itchy, fragrant grass. I was well acquainted with books, ideas and lots and lots of art.”

Highly attuned to the textural and tactile properties of her work, she enjoys working with powdered graphite, soft pastel, conté crayon, gouache and watercolor and papers ranging from a medium weight Arches or Rives BFK paper to medium and very heavy Arches and Canson watercolor paper. In some instances, she adds pigment after folding the paper to enhance the compositional effects with the creases, while with others, the paper is folded, torn, and reassembled.

A critical turning point in her artistic expression came during the fall of 2001 in the midst of the events of 9/11 and the death of her father. “Although some pieces suggest landscape, none are meant to be representational,” she explains. “I intend them to be regarded as objects in their own right as they evolve from the initial idea through stages, sometimes frustrating, until I recognize some indefinable end point.”

More about Corneli’s work is available here and here. (Photo above is 06 Cathedral Falls Triptych.)

Matt Glass’ series of cinematic photographs forges a new artistic discourse incorporating core images representing the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in contemporized form where “War is a lawyer, Famine is a butcher, the Antichrist is a Hollywood starlet and Death is a pandemic.”

While each photograph suggests a distinct narrative, Glass notes the series occurs in the same apocalyptic environment. “In this world, an unknown event has left humanity in ruin,” Glass writes in his artistic statement. “The source of the violence and destruction is never seen. The human reaction to this apocalypse is the focus.”

Glass achieves a cinematic sense in his photos by extreme effects of shadowing, highlighting, and theatrical gestures as influenced by the techniques of Baroque artists such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt. “The biblical titles and characters are used to increase the scope of the photographs and give them the mythical, epic quality that Hollywood often associates with biblical stories,” he explains. “The contemporary setting brings this epic quality back home to the viewer.”

More about Glass’ work is available here and here. (Photo above is Dinner.)

Maisch’s work brings together traditional and nontraditional materials and compels the viewer to take in account the whole cycle of the natural process — not just in the comfortably revered and treasured phase of youth but in the transformative beauty of the other phases of growth, fermentation, and disintegration.

While Maisch starts with the dichotomies — comfortable vs. uncomfortable, magnetic vs. repulsive, honest vs. dishonest — he draws the viewer further in to explore the other spaces that blur these lines and to contemplate the possibility of the common ground in our whole sense of nature. “The human experience is ideal for this type of exploration,” Maisch explains. “Not only is it a physical conglomeration of chemical reactions that are constantly discarding and rebuilding, a process that seems contradictory, it is also a psychic processing of ideas and thoughts that are evolving, growing and ultimately getting tossed aside.”

More about Maisch’s work is available here. (Photo above is Untitled.)

galleryuaf was founded in the fall of 2007 when the Utah Arts Festival organization moved to Artspace City Center. This new location provides space for a gallery and gives the Festival a year-round opportunity to showcase the works of emerging Utah artists. galleryuaf is a member of the Salt Lake Gallery Association. For more information, visit here.