Seventy-Fifth Annual Utah Spring Salon

Springville Museum of Art

Springville, Utah

(801) 489-2727

www.shs.nebo.edu/Museum/museum.html

Seventy-Fifth Annual Utah Spring Salon

Elva E. Malin, Provo River Falls, 1998, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches

This year's exhibition, which runs through 11 July 1999, is the seventy-fifth annual Utah Spring Salon. Only the Utah Arts Council annual is older in the InterMountain West area. This venerable exhibition, at one time, was noted for its inclusion of art from national artists. Since the late 1980's it has included only artists from Utah. This is a return to the very first years of 1921-23 in which only Utah artists were included. The Museum's roots are planted in Utah soil and the past decade has seen phenomenal growth of the exhibition.

Over five hundred artists entered 824 works of art into the exhibition. Of these the two jurors, Ric Collier, director of the Salt Lake Art Center and Nancy Harrison, senior vice president of Sotheby's auction - house , chose 233 works of art. The Museum director added twelve more. Three artists, Arnold Friberg, Sheri Lynn Doty and Anton Rasmussen each entered one work each. This brought the total to 248 works of art.

Artworks are displayed in five galleries and two hallways, making it the largest professional fine art exhibition in Utah. The "Step-down" Gallery is reserved for the show's award winners. It has thirty-eight works by thirty-five artists. The jurors gave the flrst place award to Nathan Bennett's "Willow Park" and "Dusk." Two second place awards were given to ViviAnn Rose's "Enigma" and Lara Cannon's "Whispers of Eve." Three third place awards were won by Barbara Ann Frazier's "A Mother's Plea for Peace, " Gary E. Smith's "Rlack and White Field" and Cassandra Barney's "Her Fruit."

The Director' s award is an outstanding canvas by Arnold Friberg, entitled "Children of Manitou." This is the first oil by the artist to be exhibited in the Spring Salon for over 25 years. It represents a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman in church with a native American, a mountainman, and a fair lady and her family. One child looks admiringly at the Mountie as does a young unmarried lady. Painted in 1967, this painting shows Friberg in all his powerful ability to group figures, create a narrative, and paint an authentic view of another time and place. On the back of the canvas is a remarkable charcoal drawing of the Virgin Mary and a passage from Luke in the New Testament.

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This page was originally published in 1999 in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information.