All the News that Fits by Paula Sher 1
Gallery Stroll – April 2005
Art
What will you do with this copy of SLUG Magazine? How long will it take you to read it? Will you store it with the rest of your old magazines, thinking you will someday need or want to read it again? Maybe you’ll make a collage on your wall of those scintillating girls from the KRCL show Local Imposters. SLUG’s own Camilla Taylor makes buttons for friends. I personally put magazines in the bathroom to be used as toilet paper to encourage unwanted houseguests to leave. The Salt Lake Arts Center’s latest exhibit, The Daily News (on display until June 1) posed the question, “What kind of imprint has the printed world made on you?” In addition, they explore the question, what do you do with the news when it’s not new anymore?
Upon entering the exhibit, my eyes were quickly drawn to Al Souza’s encased spitballs. Made from old newspaper, wadded and torn into perfect balls ready to be lodged into a straw and hurled at an unsuspecting bystander. This paper once held history-making information, but now its purpose is to cling to the ceiling in some bathroom.
I delighted in the funny pages by Christopher Finch and the homage to the god of trashy gossip columns, The Stun, by Derek Boshier. Paula Sher’s work, titled All the News that Fits, maintains that you need to only read a quick blurb in order to get all the news you need. Yet you may need to read that blurb over and over again until your mind is inundated with this useless information! Bruce Campbell’s work, titled A Black and White Day, is censored by the artist which reminds the viewer that we are subject to a less-than-complete view, even in the newspaper. Is it the whole or only a half? Nancy Chunn spent 1996 collecting every front page of the New York Times; yes, every day for the entire year! This exhibit features the collection from September of 1996. Organized as a calendar in chronological order, you see warnings of crisis and devastation juxtaposed next to stories of relief and celebrations. Chunn used watercolors and pastels to unify the events. This unified look also brings to light that the seemingly random events, when seen as a whole, are not so random. Pat Boas has made art out of finding the patterns within the random. Her work, All Heads on the Front Pages, documents the similarities in the formatting of a front page.
This show is so intelligent and imaginative you, too, may be inspired to look at the old news in a new way! The Salt Lake Art Center is free to the public, open daily Tuesday through Thursday and Saturday 10a.m. to 5p.m; open late Fridays from 10a.m. to 9p.m. and Sunday from 1p.m. to 5p.m. It’s located at 20 S. West Temple. For more information, call 801-328-4201.