In the traditional sense of the words, Losing Ground is described as a status of diminishment. The loss of what one might formerly have “had.” It denotes the not always enviable situation of reduction in area governed, decreased mental status or capacity, territory commanded through war or other means. It may also indicate a status of unwilful surrender of a thing or status once regarded as valuable or desirable.

 

For the past many decades, the quality of human life has experienced some areas of growth (particularly on the scientific front) but has also been challenged in its wholeness through biological jeopardy, increasing political divisiveness, and the forfeiture of truth based upon empirical evidence giving status to mere opinion. The works in this group show center on ideas of Loss. Loss of sustainable environmental ecosystems. Loss of wholesome production of foods. Loss of health through human systems of exploitation of the earth. Loss of lives through war and predation. Loss of reason and truth as a basis for interaction within human culture. Loss of the basic ideas of human kindness that bound together people of disparate beliefs, traditions, and perspectives in the great American experiment. It presents a lamentation in the face of an uncertain future.

 

In the current times, Identity issues have come into focus through large societal currents as those expressed in the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. The fervor of feminism still strives to achieve a voice that is purposefully and unwittingly at times denied recognition or even allowance to speak at the table. Silencing of the powerless continues to rage in the halls of power, and the disempowered remain without a voice to protest their isolation.

 

The ravaging effects of a global pandemic which has already left millions of dead in its wake continues to this day. Wrapped in non-sequitur arguments, the world populations are torn this way and that with the only sure impact as divided beliefs, fear, uncertainty as to what is real and true. The emotional and psychological impact of this divisiveness is surely felt in the individual as well as the illness of the society that it threatens. To be sure, we are losing much individually and collectively as a human species, and some fear this portends an apocalyptic end to humans. This exhibition attempts to record and raise awareness of some of these losses in a way that is aesthetically satisfying while poetically decrying our status and trajectory. It is hoped that more awareness, and public participation will be able to slow and even reverse the scope and nature of the losses to humanity and our natural world.

 

Nancy Steele-Makasci is an interdisciplinary visual artist and art educator. Working in a wide range of reproducible print media, painting, drawing and book arts, Nancy confronts a variety of contemporary social justice issues including gender/cultural inequalities, environmental issues, and economic disparity.

 

Most recently, Nancy completed an artist residency at the MI-LAB in Japan where she focused on honing her skills and knowledge of the advanced techniques of Mokuhanga (traditional Japanese color woodblock printing). Her artwork was also accepted for exhibition at the International Mokuhanga Conference Juried Exhibition in Echizen, Japan during April 2024.

 

Nancy has received awards from the Utah Arts Council and the American Association of University Women (AAUW) of Utah. She regularly exhibits her work locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Nancy continually encourages others to make art and to pursue their dreams of becoming artists in her position as Professor of Art in the Department of Art & Design at Utah Valley University where she has taught courses in painting, drawing, printmaking and art education.

 

Nancy received an MFA in Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MA in Art from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Additionally, she completed a BA in Visual Arts Education (magna cum laude) at Ball State University.

 

I was never meant to be an artist. At least, that is how it seemed. My youth was spent working in my father’s fields and sawmill in an isolated Appalachian community in southeastern Indiana. My unique hardships growing up poor in the dying agricultural landscape and culture of Appalachia profoundly shaped my artistic vision. My early struggles in becoming an artist, however, showed me that being an artist is not always afforded through affluence, opportunity, and privilege. Being an artist was written into my DNA.

 

Printmaking, book arts, collage, drawing and painting are my preferred means of expression. Creative ideas are unique and powerful, sometimes even magical, often only appearing once. The artist’s job is to capture these ideas and insights. Art is also a form of communication. I like to work with themes that affect the human condition whether that be the perpetual silencing and inequal treatment of women in our society or the environmental destruction that continuously evolves in our current day and age. My work strives to acknowledge and confirm our current dilemmas. The acknowledgement of the serious problems within our society and our world today is the first step to defining and resolving these critical and often threatening issues.

 

Born in San Francisco, California, Marcus Vincent was raised in Buffalo, New York. His work shifted from early figurative subjects to non-objective works concerned with ideas around emotional and psychological states of being as realized through interpretive color interaction, qualities of paint/surface, and Zen gesture.

 

Finding the State of Life in our contemporary situation rife with contradictions and maledictions, these paintings and drawings present a lamentation of things in jeopardy. The world has seemingly gone insane in that what one could once assert as truth is challenged by the status now given “opinion.” This is insane. We live in a time where authoritarian despots threaten other nations and even our own from within while rallying illiterate masses to vote against even their own best interests through lying, deceit, and misinformation. It is all madness. In the midst of these struggles, both of my parents and my younger brother passed away. Death seems very close, and presses upon the senses.

 

What else could I do but present a quiet observation on the situation? The images derive from series of experiences throughout my life, but mostly have their genesis in my youth in the woods of Buffalo, NY. They combine to emotional effect for their native memories and also present conditions. These settings seemed to rise unbidden to the canvas asserting the necessity of embedding those private moments in what is a universal cry.  A cry for peace. A cry for reason. A lamentation for those lost and those losing. A cry for the little people whose faces find themselves under the foot of the haughty. A cry for the powerless and what they are forced to endure in that meager meekness. Yes, the works are semi-abstract for the most part but rise from places in the psyche not altogether understood even in their making. Those that have ears to hear and eyes to see may find some solace in these lamentations. I hope that it is possible to meet on that plane.

 

During the later decades of the 20th century, physicists conducted a series of now famous experiments based on the theory of the Observer Effect, which postulates that the act of observing an object, or a phenomenon physically alters it. In these experiments, the tiniest quantum particles of the matter, the stuff that makes up our world, were shown to exist in an indeterminate limbo before they were noticed.

 

As one of the experimenters, American quantum physicist John Wheeler described, “we are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participants. In some strange sense, this is a participatory universe.”

 

Participatory Universe is a photography project that asks what happens when we intentionally observe something that we had not previously noticed. I constructed a frame out of three sheets of black aluminum— two 4’x1’ legs and a 6’x1’ top. I carry the physical frame into landscapes of nothingness, the spare, empty spaces of the American West that we all drive by without really seeing, the in-between places on our way to something more worthy of our attention. I place the black aluminum into the landscape, creating images that are quite literally framed. Because framing an object or an image is a technique our minds are all accustomed to as a way to underscore importance or meaning.

 

With each image, I, the photographer and you, the viewer, both become observers in this experiment: when we bring focused attention to these vistas that previously existed in some unseen limbo, do they change? Does the nothingness become a somethingness? Does the act of framing the scene give it meaning that it did not inherently possess until we noticed it?

 

Alexandra Fuller is a self-taught visual artist based in the rural Utah desert. While she now works primarily in photography and installation, she also has a deep background in narrative and documentary filmmaking.  Alexandra’s artwork explores the relationship between resilient people and places on the edge, as well as the changing nature of both. Coincidence, damage and imperfection are essential elements of her work in every medium.

 

Alexandra’s films have premiered at Sundance, won a special jury prize at SXSW and a Vimeo Staff Pick, and screened at dozens of festivals worldwide. Her recent visual artwork—often combining photography, installation and poetry— hangs in numerous private residences and businesses and has been exhibited in recent group shows at UMOCA and Modern West Fine Art, a collaboration with the 801 Salon, and in solo shows at CityHome Collective's Underground Gallery and the Boulder City Hall. Two different bodies of her work will be included in the Salt Lines show at the Southern Utah Museum of Art in October.