Artists

JEN HARMON ALLEN is a Utah sculptor and installation artist whose subject matter is the human body with a psychological backstory. She grew up in Connecticut where she learned to look for stone walls and abandoned house foundations in the woods near her home. She studied bronze casting at Wellesley and received her MFA at Brigham Young University. She states: “The human spirit is forever but it knows that the body is not. Faced with the reality of the body’s eventual treachery, our spirit wants to be given credit for sticking around. So I create work that points to ways the human spirit leaves traces of itself all over the place. An empty dress or an army of miniature legs marching through space are examples of this pull between body and spirit. I’m always looking for signs of life in objects.” Harmon Allen lives in Eagle Mountain, Utah, with her husband and two rambunctious sons. Her work can be seen at www.plasterwoman.com.

Sunny Taylor was born and raised in Utah. She attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2005. She then received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2007 from The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. Taylor taught as an assistant professor, from 2008-14 in the Studio Arts program of BYU.

DAVID RUHLMAN is a self-taught artist working primarily in gouache on wood panel. He has shown his artwork locally, nationally and internationally. An early mantra for his art comes from the artist Jean Dubuffet who stated, “Art should always make people laugh a little and frighten them a little. Anything but bore them. Art has no right to be boring.” His work can be viewed at www.davidruhlman. com.

He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and studied there at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) under Wilhelm Marstrand. Bloch’s parents wanted their son to enter what they considered to be a respectable profession – an officer in the Navy. This, however, was not what he wanted. His only interest was drawing and painting, and he was consumed by the idea of becoming an artist. He went to Italy to study art, passing through the Netherlands, where he became acquainted with the work of Rembrandt, which became a major influence on him.[1] Bloch met his wife, Alma Trepka, in Rome, where he married her on 31 May 1868. They were happily married until her early death in 1886.

CHRIS PURDIE {chrispurdie.com} was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He studied sculpture at Brigham Young University, receiv￾ing his BFA in 2010. Purdie’s fascination with light and sound, and the relationships between them, began at an early age and in￾spired him with a great passion for art, both musical and visual. His love for performance art flourished thoughout his young years while he played for dozens of bands, and eventually in￾formed his belief that art should have the same interactive, experiential qualities found in live music. Although his work is in physi￾cal media such as paint, wood, and metal, he fancies himself more a sculptor of noise, experience, and community. Through this au￾dio-visual exploration, his work examines perception and cognition as they relate to the formation of identity, all the while seek￾ing to capture the energy found in live musical performance.

Jared Lindsay Clark is a visual artist who mainly constructs installations, sculpture and drawings. During his years at Brigham Young University where he earned a BFA, he found himself drawn to abstraction and mini￾malism. Today we see this through his shown work across the state and country.

Annie Kennedy is an artist whose practice is based around Relational Aesthetics. She explores both the vast scale and the intricate detail of her local community, her backyard and her own life. Using material from all these sources she develops a variety of projects that have included outdoor installations, films and intimate personal work.

JORGE COCCO SANTÁNGELO was born in Argentina in 1936. He is a selftaught artist with international recognition. He calls his style “sacrocubism” because of his sacred subject matter and the clear influence of cubism. As a style, sacrocubism moves the viewer’s attention away from superfluous details—textures of fabric, the accuracy of historical backgrounds, or the impossibility of capturing an exact likeness of Christ—by depicting simple shapes that allow the viewer to focus on the essential and most holy aspects of the sacred events themselves.

CARL CHRISTIAN ANTON CHRISTENSEN (1831–1912) was a Danish-American artist known best for his renderings of historical events of the early LDS Church. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and emigrated to Utah in 1857 after serving three LDS missions in Scandinavia.

STEPHANIE K. NORTHRUP is an artist specializing in oils, acrylics, and other media for fine art and illustration. Her works include Christian LDS-themed art and more.