Exhibitions Open Sep 14 through Oct 23, 2026
Fri, Sep 18, 6-9pm: Opening Reception & Salt Lake Gallery Stroll
Fri, Oct 16, 6-9pm: Salt Lake Gallery Stroll
Vicky Lowe (Group Exhibition)
Exhibition
This exhibit brings together a group of artists with connections to textiles as a living language of memory, resistance, and cultural continuity. Each thread ties personal histories to collective belonging, stories passed through generations, hands, and textiles. Rooted in ancestral knowledge and contemporary expression, the works honor weaving as an art, ceremony, healing, and storytelling. From fiber to form, these artists will invite us to listen closely: to feel the labor of preserving and protecting cultural practices, to see our visible and invisible connections, and, above all, to recognize our power to weave new futures with strength, memory, and dignity.
Biography
Originally from Chiapas, Mexico, Vicky Lowe K’ulub is a multidisciplinary artist and educator based in Salt Lake City. Her work varies from painting, hand-crafter paper collage, natural dyes, and backstrap weaving. Through her work she honors Indigenous knowledge and diasporic memory. As program director for Born from Corn and Weaving Memories at Artes de México en Utah, she develops culturally rooted workshops that empower community storytelling. Vicky began learning backstrap weaving from her mother, reclaiming a family tradition nearly lost in her generation. Her practice, shaped by self-taught practice and ancestral connection, is an act of resistance, healing, and belonging.
Aurora Hughes Villa & Janimarie Lester DeRose
Exhibition
This exhibition is one that will feature both sculptural and functional ceramic work as well mixed media installation work. Aurora Hughes Villa and Janimarie Lester DeRose have a common thread in their work exploring themes relating to memories, domesticity, the body, and the decorative arts. Both artists would like to create new work for an exhibition at Finch Lane Gallery. Aurora would like to create an installation with ceramic objects and mixed media. She is exploring a new body of work in which she is sewing and painting on handprinted wallpaper. She is interested in exhibiting the wall paper mixed media work alongside her ceramic work. She would like to create ceramic forms that are slip cast and press molded. She plans to continue silk-screening onto the ceramic forms with text and imagery creating objects that could be displayed on the wall and pedestals. Janimarie plans to continue exploring both functional and sculptural ceramic forms, depicting generations of mothers teaching daughters, suggesting a sense of belonging and purpose, passed down through food and home. Layers of poetry, apron patterns, and windows tease the bittersweet edge to that security of place. Most of Janimarie's ceramic pieces will present themselves on pedestals and found objects such as antique ironing boards, chairs, and windows, where Aurora Hughes Villa's work will present as an installation on one to two walls (and pedestals).
Biographies
Aurora Hughes Villa is an artist, educator, and art advocate. She is an Associate Professor and the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Endowed Program Director for Elementary Arts Education at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Prior to moving to Utah, Aurora was a full-time art professor at North Central College (IL) where she taught sculpture and ceramics. Aurora holds degrees in art education and ceramics. After completing her MFA in Ceramics from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (IL), she exhibited her work nationally, with her artwork appearing in Ceramics Art and Perception. Aurora’s ceramic work explores ideas and imagery relating to memory, home, domesticity, the body, and the decorative arts.
Janimarie Lester DeRose is a Utah Clay Artist and Educator and can often be found working in her home studio, Salty Peach Pottery. Janimarie earned a BFA in Ceramics from Utah State University, explored Alaska for a few years, returning home to be with family and pursue a degree in Art Education from Weber State University.
Janimarie is exploring both functional and sculptural ceramic work. This show is new work produced in response to working toward a shared exhibition. However, Janimarie has pursued the ideas behind this body of work for 15 years, since the birth of her daughters. She engages functional pottery surfaces with layered images of recipes, aprons, windows, and women's figures. She strives to explore generations of mothers and daughters, passing down a bitter-sweet belonging, through the traditions of food and home.
