Celebrating Utah artists with a year of bold, resonant exhibitions
Finch Lane Gallery, housed in the historic Art Barn, is proud to announce its 2026 exhibition calendar. Selected from 150 applications, the 14 featured exhibitions reflect the gallery’s role as a vital platform for Utah’s visual arts community.
This announcement follows a banner year for Finch Lane, which saw a 37% increase in attendance, fueled in part by the gallery’s NCECA Featured Exhibition and the energy of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference in Salt Lake City. Building on that momentum, the 2026 lineup continues the gallery’s tradition of presenting work that bridges traditional craft and cutting-edge contemporary practices.
“Every year at Finch Lane, we get to bring together artists whose work really connects with our community,” said Todd Oberndorfer, Gallery Director. “Our 2026 lineup is full of voices tackling urgent questions, sharing personal stories, and pushing boundaries in exciting ways. We’re proud to keep creating a space where those kinds of conversations can happen.”
2026 Finch Lane Gallery Exhibition Artists:
JANUARY 12 – FEBRUARY 20, 2026
Ben Bloch – Make Me a Landscape, Do Not Include Any Sky explores the feedback loop between human-made art and AI-generated imagery, reinterpreting the machine’s visions back into paint to question what technology can reveal about human creativity. Bloch is an artist working between Utah and Montana whose work has been featured in the UK Guardian, Hyperallergic, and other national and international venues.
Carol Sogard presents “unnatural fossils” created from discarded materials merging with organic debris, confronting viewers with the enduring remnants of the Anthropocene. Sogard is a Utah-based artist who integrates photography, weaving, and sewing to examine the environmental impacts of consumer waste, with work exhibited internationally.
MARCH 2 – APRIL 10, 2026
Jill Saxton Smith – (un)contained: On Skin, Memory, and the Bodies We Hold uses algae-based plastics, SCOBY, textiles, and found objects to explore skin as a porous boundary between identity, history, and care. Saxton Smith is a Utah-based interdisciplinary artist and educator who has exhibited across three continents, including at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.
Benjamin Childress – Shadows and Alleyways captures spectral figures inhabiting overlooked urban spaces, their vibrancy serving as reminders of the lives and histories embedded in the city’s quiet corners. Childress is a Salt Lake City painter whose layered, atmospheric canvases explore identity, connection, and the unseen forces shaping place and memory.
APRIL 17 – MAY 29, 2026
Susan Jacobsen Kirby merges imagery from her years in San Miguel de Allende with scenes of the Great Salt Lake and Southern Utah, layering time, ancestry, and place in vibrant, narrative compositions. Kirby is a Salt Lake City native with an international career whose autobiographical paintings weave together personal histories, cultural icons, and Utah’s land art.
Hannah Vaughn – Reliquaries of Absence features vessel-like sculptures crafted from wood, textile, porcelain, and salt that evoke memory and projection through fragile, suspended forms. Vaughn is a Salt Lake City–based architect, educator, and artist who co-founded VY Architecture and teaches at the University of Utah.
JUNE 8 – JULY 17, 2026
Laura Hope Mason, Claire Tollstrup, and Elizabeth Sanchez – Deserts We Have Crossed presents three distinct painterly perspectives on the desert as environment and metaphor, exploring themes of solitude, renewal, and resilience. Mason is a Salt Lake City native whose minimalist mountain and desert landscapes have been exhibited in regional museums and galleries. Tollstrup is a Utah-based oil painter who teaches workshops internationally and depicts flora and fauna as symbols of growth and rebirth. Sanchez, originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, creates figurative works exploring identity and emotion, with exhibitions in Mexico City, California, and Utah.
Michelle Wentling transforms materials collected from Superfund sites in the Salt Lake Valley into handmade paper, dyes, and textiles, revealing narratives about contamination and shifting perceptions of landscape. Wentling is a Salt Lake City artist whose practice in weaving, papermaking, and writing examines the intersections of craft, ecology, and labor.
JULY 27 – SEPTEMBER 4, 2026
Lizzie Windsor, Brenna Cooper, and Jeremiah Parkin – IRL reframes the photograph as a physical object, uncovering unnoticed details of daily life through the lens of image-making and material presence. Windsor is a Provo-based photographer and textile artist whose work uncovers hidden systems in her surroundings. Cooper is a Utah-based photographer, printmaker, and sculptor who explores time, observation, and introspective spaces. Parkin is a sculptor and photographer from Provo whose work draws on personal experiences with labor, construction, and raw materials.
Bianca Velasquez's exhibition parallels ecological fire management and personal renewal, using beadwork to explore destruction as a path to regrowth, grief, and healing. A Salt Lake City–based artist and writer, Velasquez’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in cultural heritage and shaped by her experiences growing up in Utah.
SEPTEMBER 14 – OCTOBER 23, 2026
Vicky Lowe leads a textile-based group exhibition exploring weaving as a living language of memory, resistance, and cultural continuity. Lowe is a multidisciplinary artist and educator from Chiapas, Mexico, now based in Salt Lake City, whose work honors Indigenous knowledge and diasporic memory.
Aurora Hughes Villa and Janimarie Lester DeRose combines ceramics, mixed media, and installation to explore memory, domesticity, and intergenerational bonds between mothers and daughters. Hughes Villa is an artist, educator, and arts advocate who directs the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Endowed Program for Elementary Arts Education at Utah State University. Lester DeRose is a Utah ceramicist and educator whose functional and sculptural works blend imagery of recipes, aprons, and women’s figures to reflect generational traditions of home and care.
NOVEMBER 2 – DECEMBER 18, 2026
Stephanie Leitch, Sri Whipple, and Zak Jensen – Generative Chamber explores repetition, language, and bodily form through installation, calligraphic painting, and multimedia works. Leitch is a Salt Lake City–based installation artist whose work engages systems, repetition, and site-specificity, with exhibitions throughout the West. Whipple is a painter and muralist known for his distinctive style that merges art historical influences with pop culture. Jensen is an artist and educator who explores language and meaning through multimedia practice, holding an MFA from Yale University.
Maddison Colvin and James Talbot pairs drawings and photographs in a collaborative study of memory, disappearance, and the elusive nature of place. Colvin is an Orem-based interdisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, drawing, photography, and writing, with national and international fellowships. Talbot is a Utah-based photographer and publisher whose work mythologizes places of personal significance through subtle visual detail.
