This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The average person perusing the booths at an art festival is confronted with a series of fundamental aesthetic questions: Is this art? Is this a craft? Or is this crap?
In the 159 booths at the Utah Arts Festival, which opened Thursday at downtown's Library Square, you'll find plenty of excellent examples of the first two categories. As for the third — well, that's all a matter of taste.
For instance, Shao Lin Xia makes model airplanes out of aluminum soda cans. To many, this would not exactly be high art. But Xia, 75, is a retired Boeing aeronautic engineer. Each of his models of aircraft — from World War II planes up to the latest stealth crafts — are designed from the actual blueprints, miniaturized using computer-aided design software. "Just like real aircraft technology," Xia says.
Xia puts an artistic spin on his models when he painstakingly cuts and bends aluminum from beer cans following his tiny templates. How much work goes into, for instance, a B-26 Martin bomber model?
"It takes me five hours for this plane," Xia says as he probes the plane's tail with a tiny file. "It's not easy!"
The prices of Xia's models range from $15 up to more than $200 for a B-17 with a two-foot wingspan.
Not far away, Della Goheen of Olympia, Wash., is selling women's hats she makes from felt and Panama straw. This is her fourth year at the Salt Lake City festival, but she has been making hats full time for 20 years.
Goheen shapes the hats on vintage hat blocks, using steam to soften the material, inspired by her grandmother Mary, a milliner. As a child in the 1960s, Goheen sometimes helped her grandmother make hats for Las Vegas showgirls.
The demand for hats is way up this year, following the international hoopla over the royal wedding on April 29. "Hats have been really popular because everyone is looking at Kate Middleton and the British," she says. "People are in tune again with headwear."
Her hats range in price from $35 for a simple flapper-esque cloche or toque, a bit more for a panama sun hat, to $340 for a hat shaped like a human face.
Clyde Ashby and Evan Memmott, of the Salt Lake-based Copper Palate Press artists' cooperative, are demonstrating how to print T-shirts in an area set aside for urban art and teens. Bring a shirt, and they'll ink a 2011 Art Fest logo on it.
"It's good to see more of urban art in the festival," says Ashby, who admits to a severe case of landscape-art fatigue.
Set aside the state's beauty, he says. "Finally, people are buying into Salt Lake being more than a landscape-artist community," Ashby says. "This little state is growing up."
Of course, if you like landscapes, Darrell Thomas of Centerville and other artists can fix you up with a broad inventory of red rock and distant mountain horizons. Or you can buy 3-D urban scenes from Shawn Harris of San Francisco.
The festival also spotlights literary art through workshops offered by the Salt Lake Community College Writing Center. This year, the center met visual arts halfway with workshops in comics and graphic story telling. Richard Jenkins, a graphic novel author from Arkansas, found his classes packed with kids, 8 to 13 years old, equally split between girls and boys. All were eager to learn the way of the cartoonist.
"Cartoons are visual and more universal than written language — that's the power. Kids immediately see meaning in cartooning," Jenkins said after his first class. "They developed characters and were working on stories. It was quiet in there."
If you're drawn to the serious art of trucker hats, let's say — or, as they're sometimes called, "gimme caps" — Greg Covello and his crew of graffiti artists can produce a hand-painted one at the Higher Ground Learning booth.
Higher Ground offers year-round alternative learning programs for youths, but in the summer, the group offers workshops in photography, graffiti and spray-painting manifestos. For younger children, they offer Gross Anatomy, a class that explores scabs, farts and burps, "so younger kids can learn about anatomy," Covello explains.
Finally, if your art palette veers more to your palate, you can retire to the Uinta Brewing tent to sample their Crooked Line series under the tutelage of an expert. Uinta's Joe Mastrorocco says the festival attracts the kind of Utahn who appreciates craft beers.
"The people coming to the arts festival are looking for something out of the ordinary, unique and different," Mastrorocco says. "It's a good match with our beer."
Diane Evans, of Park City, who was nearby enjoying a Detour Double India Pale Ale, its label created by festival artist Leia Bell, interjected: "Beer making is an art, so it belongs here."
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Downtown's arty party
What • Utah Arts Festival
When • Thursday to Sunday; noon to 11 p.m.
Admission • Adults, $10. Kids 12 and under get in free. Seniors, $5. Check out $5 lunchtime specials and passes.
Where • Between Salt Lake City Hall and downtown library
Getting there • Parking will be insane, but a TRAX station is next to the festival grounds. Or use the bike lot and receive a $2 admission discount
Information • http://www.uaf.org, Twitter @utahartfest and facebook.com/utahartsfestival —
More events
Here are some other recommended events and exhibits scheduled at this year's Utah Arts Festival:
Spirit of '77 • The festival will celebrate its 35th anniversary with an intimate show of the work of six Utah artists who were born in the same year as the festival. The work, ranging from video to sculpture, will be displayed in the Main Library's fourth-floor gallery.
Taking it to the street • At scheduled times during the festival, Aerial Arts of Utah will drape swaths of fabric — and dancers — from the library's iconic crescent wall.
Do-it-yourself supervillains • Richard Jenkins, creator of the serial graphic novels Sky Ape and Toil, will work with budding comic illustrators at Salt Lake Community College's on-site Community Writing Center.
Get bombed • Utah's rogue knitters round off months of "yarn bombing" on trees, benches and parking meters with a "Random Acts of Art Knitting" installation on Washington Square.
Or drinking responsibly • Uinta Brewing will be offering an exploration of the art of brew through tastings, food pairings and a limited-edition Arts Fest Amber Ale.
On your toes • Ballet West will return to the festival with five works, including "Fall into Loving Arms" and "The Flames of Paris Pad de Deux."
Listen up • Christopher Stark, Ethan Wickman and David Featherstone, winners of the Utah Arts Festival's Composer Commissions, will present their works: "Promontories" (Stark), "Winter's Burst" (Wickman) and "Recall" (Featherstone). Thursday, June 23, 8:15 p.m.; Friday, 8:30 p.m.; Saturday, June 25, 4 p.m. —
Artists recognized for their contributions to Salt Lake City
Mayor Ralph Becker, in conjunction with the Utah Arts Festival, is pleased to honor local artists and artistic efforts at an awards ceremony on Friday, June 24 at 8:15 p.m. on the Festival Stage at the northeast corner of Washington Square.
Presentation of the Mayor's Artist Awards continues a tradition started in 1992 that aims to honor individuals and groups that have made significant contributions to Salt Lake City's artistic landscape.
This year's awardees are: Trent Alvey – Visual Arts; Charles Lynn Frost – Performing Arts; Carol Edison – Service to the Arts by an Individual; Ruth Lubbers – Service to the Arts by an Individual and The Book Arts Program – Service to the Arts by an Organization.
The Utah Arts Festival has blossomed from its humble beginnings in 1977 into a dynamic, four-day extravaganza and is now the biggest outdoor arts event in the state. Festival visitors can enjoy more than 140 visual artists, more than 100 performing arts groups, a short-film festival, local and international street theatre and an array of culinary delights.
The 2011 Utah Arts Festival runs Thursday, June 23 through Sunday, June 26 from noon to 11 p.m. on and around Library Square, 400 South and 200 East in downtown Salt Lake City.
Adult admission is $10 at the gate, $7 in advance. Children 12 and under are free. Seniors 65 and above are $5. Reduced adult admission is $5 and available from noon to 3 p.m. on Thursday and Friday. More information can be found at http://www.uaf.org