Had a hankerin’ the other day to once again head on down to the University of Utah and do a little nosin’ around. You can always find something of interest to occupy your time along that stretch of the northeast bench.
A trek to the valley the week previous had featured a side trip to Red Butte Garden to check on the progress of the concert amphitheater retrofit. Let’s just say they have a ways to go. Talisker’s employee housing might be further along.
The fact that a couple of cool exhibits at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts were about to slip out the back door to make room for a couple of others lent a bit of urgency to this most recent jaunt. And with the Museum of Natural History just around the corner, no reason not to make a day of it.
One of the exhibits at the UMFA paid homage to a quite interesting photographic record of the geology, geography, and early human history of Echo and Weber canyons signature landscapes within Summit and Morgan counties and historic western migration routes.
Titled “Forgotten Splendor: Echo and Weber Canyons,” the exhibit, which ends this coming Sunday, revisits that time in our history the late 19th century — when the two landscapes were famous throughout much of the world for their “sublime” and “breathtaking” beauty.
In fact, to this day, whenever I find my sublimity tank running low, I’m off to Echo Canyon to top it off and take a breath. The fact that it’s on the way to Pete’s Roc N Rye Saloon in Evanston is pure happenstance.
The railroads, especially the Union Pacific that blasted its way through in 1869, got the ball rolling when they sent out promotional materials filled with illustrations of the then unimaginable geological phenomena contained in the two canyons.
Before you knew it, the glorious and quite astonishing iconic images of “Devil’s Slide,” “Witch’s Rock,” and “The Great Easterner” had made their way east. “Come see the Wild West,” they seemed to say. In the blink of an eye, artists of various stripes, including photographers, lay about the land. They would take it upon themselves to capture the essence of the joint.
Some of these materials, exhibited in the long narrow canyon-like hallways upstairs at UMFA, are especially intriguing. Checking out the canyons in “stereopticon” 3-D while you hold special lenses up in front of the side-by-side images has a tendency to bring the huge boulders and soaring summits to the forefront.
Not to say that the state-of-the-art back then rivaled the recent “U2 3D” film that played the Eccles Center during Sundance, but you can imagine the effect these images of the “Gateway to the Intermountain West” had on travelers, explorers, and tourists of the time.
This was all way before the job of publicizing the wonders of the two canyons fell upon Frank Cattelan, longtime chief cook and bottle washer up at the Echo Café. Friends of Frank will be glad to know that he has evolved from the piece-of-work they’ve always known into a museum-worthy object d’art.
A classic, somewhat recent, photo of the local legend, sporting a hash slinger’s hat and leaning on the Café countertop, hangs proudly from the wall alongside the rest of the exhibit. No surprise, actually. Frank’s always been an important part of that historic landscape.
The other presentation I had to see at UMFA, before it too hit the road on Sunday, was “Natural Revelations: Paintings by Susan Swartz.” Featuring recent large-scale works by the artist, who I believe lives at least part of the time in Park City, this stuff is beyond my vocabulary to adequately articulate. I know that’s never stopped me before.
Let’s just say that to stand in front of these abstract works is to get drawn into the spiritual and natural elements of the landscapes in question. The colors both boggle and soothe the visual senses. They both confront and welcome. The inferences flat out overwhelm. How fortunate that I didn’t let this exhibit slip by.
Meanwhile, over at the Museum of Natural History, it was all about taking a walk on the wild side. As a way of celebrating the centennial of the National Wildlife Refuge System, the exhibit “America’s Wildest Places” takes up one of the lower halls. And, as long as you’re already in the neighborhood, the dinosaurs and the “Range Creek” displays remain upstairs.
Last, but not least, on this day of touring spaces sacred to the muses, was a stop at The Pie, a museum of sorts that features many years worth of chalk art on the walls and two quite exciting interactive examples of expressionism in its permanent collection.
The first, entitled “Extreme Veggie,” was a most engrossing piece that utilized the multimedia techniques of layered fresh spinach, artichoke hearts, Sicilian spiced tomatoes, red onions, feta, and mozzarella. True art! ‘Nuff said!
The second, the coup de grace, the ultimate stroke in a day of high inspiration, was an elegant pint-sized piece that utilized, in the words of the artist, “a unique mix of nitrogen and carbon dioxide in order to cause its liquid swirl to tumble and surge and gradually separate into a black body with a smooth creamy head.” Entitled “Guinness Draught,” it put all the other exhibits into proper perspective. Art is as art does!
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.