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Show I n the spring of 1978 a statewide survey which culminated in the Utah Folk Art Exhibition and the publication of this catalog was begun. In the course of this fieldwork it became apparent that the folk-art objects in Utah's material culture could be divided into several subject areas. These subject areas were then explored by experts whose essays subsequently provided the framework for the selection of specific exhibition artifacts and photographs. Nearly two hundred of these objects were gathered into an exhibit opened by Governor Scott M. Matheson on October 10, 1978, at the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City. Brigham Young University, Southern Utah State College, and Utah State University also hosted the exhibit for one month each. The display was then dismantled, with most of the objects being photographed and returned to the donors. The next steps in presenting material from this survey were to compile this catalog and to sponsor a lecture series. The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, a humanities research center at Brigham Young University, joined with the Utah Arts Council in sponsoring a series of presentations on Utah folk art. Using this catalog as the basis for the series, small groups of artifacts were reassembled for display and lectures were prepared by each of the participating essayists for presentation in the winter of 1980 at the "Peoples of Utah Museum," located in the new Utah Historical Society's quarters at the renovated Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Depot in Salt Lake City. All donated objects collected during the survey are housed at this museum for use in the ongoing presentation of ethnicity in Utah. Too often, folk art has been thought of as the quaint songs and stories of peasants or the marginal and unproportioned renderings of the naive. Rarely have the keepers of culture-the "art society"-given folk art recognition for much more than the simple enjoyment it provides. Folk art does not often receive recognition for its style or for its skillful qualities; and, more importantly, it is generally robbed of the dignity of having viable traditions. In an age in which we are sensitive to civil liberties, folk art has gained a political meaning as a movement to give unrepresented artistic traditions a forum. Yet with or without this current movement, some aspects of the designed world will always be called folk art. Because the pursuit of beauty is universal and the variety of ways in which we can perceive beauty unlimited, how beauty is translated by each individual creates the texture of the human aesthetic. During the Exhibition I observed an art professor who, eagerly examining the series of photographs detailing the exterior walls of pioneer homes (Fig. 49), remarked that the forms in the masonry rivaled in beauty the finest Italian mosaics. I had never looked at the stone walls in those terms and it made me consider for a moment xiv |