Artists

DENNIS SMITH is an artist living in Highland, Utah, with his wife, Veloy and their six children. He is president of North Mountain, an artists’ co-op for visual artists, architects, and others in related fields. Dennis has numerous sculptures represented in public and private collections; his paintings from the last two years are reproduced here for the first time.

Judith McConkie, a native of Provo, Utah, set out to be an artist while an undergraduate at Brigham Young University. In her sophomore year she married James W. McConkie, then a freshman at BYU, and left art for “a more stable” career—teaching English (and some art) in Utah’s public schools. During fourteen years of marriage, she has shed rigid role expectations—at first she didn’t want to share the housework—while still identifying herself as a “traditional” wife and mother of three. When James finished law school and entered his “stable” career (on a Congressional staff, in private practice, and through unsuccessful bids for Congress and for Utah’s attorney general) she flourished, studying printmak￾ing under Eugene Frederick at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and later, after a stint at the University of Utah, under Wulf Barsch at BYU, where she teaches while completing an MFA in printmaking. Her prints and illustrations have appeared inDialogue, Sunstone and other publications and have been shown in theDeseret News annual show, the Utah ’81 art show and the Virginia Art League quarterly exhibit.

Maida Withers is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker. Withers is the founder and artistic director of Maida Withers Dance Construction Company of Washington, D.C. She is a professor at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C

IN THE WINTER OF 1979 stereotypes of Mormon women were being given an inordinate amount of media attention because of Sonia Johnson’s excom￾munication and the Church’s opposition to ERA. It was depressing enough to grow up with Patty Perfect, that ever-cheerful, well-organized, bread￾baking embodiment of Mormon Sisterhood. She and I were old adversaries. Now she was being joined by Patty Programmed, the oppressed non-thinking ultra-orthodox tool of sexist church leaders. It was too much. I felt a fierce desire to show the world Mormon women as I know them: liberal, conser￾vative, eccentric, conforming, irreverant, pious, domineering, submissive, confident, fearful, happy, depressed: sometimes all of the above in one per￾son. Our differences may be masked by our shared convictions, but they certainly exist. Beneath our Mormon facades we differ and agree in a multi￾tude of ways. So I took my camera and tape recorder and stalked friends, relatives and sisters. To establish each woman’s context, I photographed her doing some￾thing she loved in a setting where she felt most herself. This helped her to be relaxed and natural in front of the camera. It also pictorially linked her with the activity she loves most. Each sister was interviewed with a series of questions designed to elicit her feelings about herself. The resulting quotes were not intended to explain the pictures, but to complement them; to give more depth to the context. “In Context” is a work in progress, unfinished. Like a mosaic, each woman’s individual truth links with that of her sisters. The One True Mormon Woman exists, but not as one. She is many, and she is unique.

Kevin G. Barnhurst was Chair of Communication in the Digital Era at the University of Leeds and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His books include Seeing the Newspaper, The Form of News: A History, and Media Queered: Visibility and Its Discontents.

Martha Sonntag Bradley was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on June 18, 1951.[1] She had three brothers. Bradley-Evans is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Bradley-Evans was the president of the Mormon History Association. Bradley-Evans was also the co-editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.The journal encouraged members of the LDS Church to freely express their opinions and promoted discussion of various topics.Bradley-Evans taught at Brigham Young University (BYU) in the history department where she was awarded a teaching excellence award. She resigned from BYU in July 1993.

RANDY GIBBS is working toward a B.F.A. in printmaking at Arizona State University at Tempe. He hopes to teach the printmaking media on the college level. His art has appeared in a number of shows, including one at the Phoenix Art Museum.

Although every artist is influenced by other artists each prides himself on someday achieving a unique style, a trade-mark of his creativity. My hart has been influenced significantly by two artists, Peter Mitton, a Pennsylvania-born printmaker, and James Christensen, a California artist. Though still in ist formative stages, my own style is converging toward a point, a point which encompasses images and symbolic figures of the Victorian era (a perid dominant in the history of our Church). The combining of my art with the synthesis of those images which I find thought-provoking and admirable have produced a spiritual dimension which I have only recenly realized.

I find myself thoroughly involved in each print, drawing or painting–it’s conception, symbolization, executaion and underlying metaphysical message.