Watercolor as a Life Philosophy
Just one month ago, Michelle Nixon’s watercolor work appeared towering above the stage during a world premiere of Vanessa Cook’s A Brief Collection of Moments.
Now (through June 15 2026), you’ll find Nixon’s paintings in a new joint exhibition at David Ericson Fine Art, one of Utah’s most respected private galleries.
Art critic Geoff Wichert gave a review of the show for 15 Bytes. It offers a close look at Nixon’s own artistic philosophy, something Michelle shared herself while part of the Center’s 2024 Artists Residency.
“Once you put down a stroke, it’s there, and you’re stuck with it. And that’s something very scary for a lot of people about it, but there’s something very freeing. You just get to paint and let that go; not be self critical.”
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Just one month ago, Michelle Nixon’s watercolor work appeared towering above the stage during a world premiere of Vanessa Cook’s A Brief Collection of Moments. Today, you’ll find Nixon’s paintings in a new joint exhibition at David Ericson Fine Art, one of Utah’s most respected private….
Artist Savannah Liddicoat hails from Queensland Australia and is now based in the Central Coast. She recently presented her final art showcase at the Red Tree Theatre to culminate her BFA at Brigham Young University.
Xiaomei looks crestfallen. Didi tears off his military patch, leaving a line of stitching in its wake.
Look, we’re lowlifes. We always were, and we always will be. So were our parents, and our grandparents, and our great grandparents. There’s no point in trying. So let’s just be good at being lowlifes!
He laughs and raises a toast. Xiaomei doesn’t react. Da Ge watches her as he absent-mindedly toasts.
I'm going to try to tell you something you haven't heard before about my grandmother, Minerva Teichert.
She's my maternal grandmother, and after her death in 1976, she became very popular in LDS circles. She has been the subject of articles, theses, lectures, books, videos, and multiple exhibits, with copies of her works appearing in many meeting houses and temples. Forgive me if I use the terms Minerva, Grandma, and Teichert interchangeably.
At the 2025 Artists Residency at the Center, Uruguayan artist Daniel Martinez spent the week creating plein air watercolors of New York cityscapes and talking with fellow artists-in-residence. He left the Residency feeling inspired—not just by the streets of New York, but by the community and structure the program provided. …
“The world is so wide, so brimming, that it can’t possibly be captured in a single moment or a single body.”
Isaac Richards is referring to international choreographer Vanessa Cook’s new ballet work, “A Brief Collection of Moments,” which premieres with the Utah Metropolitan Ballet in their upcoming concert Tribute on April 23-24.
the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts will bring a new commissioned ballet to the stage through its partnership with Utah Metropolitan Ballet that spotlights a remarkable convergence of Latter-day Saint artistic voices — both onstage and behind the scenes. The work offers a powerful example of the creative depth and collaborative spirit emerging from this community.
Presented April 23–24 at the Covey Center for the Arts, Tribute honors four distinguished artists whose work has shaped cultural and spiritual life for Latter-day Saints in Utah and far beyond: glass artist Tom Holdman, sculptor Angela Johnson, songwriter Hilary Weeks, and the late opera singer Ariel Bybee.
Circular folded tables, white tablecloths, and textured walls are materials common to most Latter-day Saint chapels, but here Rupard uses them to visualize a scene from the New Testament, where the stone is rolled away from the sepulcher made to reveal Christ’s empty tomb on Easter morning.
What art do you keep in your home that reminds you of Jesus Christ?
For this Easter season, we invited a few friends of the Center to reflect on that question by sharing a work of art that lives in their everyday space and to tell us why it matters to them.
Observing Holy Week and celebrating the Christian liturgical calendar is still a little unfamiliar to many Latter-day Saints. With a greater emphasis on Easter and the days leading up to it in the past few years, you (and your ward) might be looking for ways to mark the events of Holy Week—and how to make them your own.
On the third day of last year’s Residency, four artists from the cohort—choreographer Thayer Jonutz, visual artists Zinta Jaunitis and Jackie Leishman, and composer David Jones—gathered in Thayer’s dance studio for an impromptu collaboration. Thayer danced sections of his new work Scorched while David improvised on the French horn. At the back of the studio, Zinta and Jackie responded by sketching the movement as it unfolded.
You think pioneer day or the pioneer trek, you don't think of one, Black folks, and two, an enslaved 19-year old, the same age as our missionaries that go out, driving the first wagon. And it follows his life and helps us learn of the enslaved experience in the early Church. The film though, is on Amazon Prime under Black Pioneer. So if you're looking to go check it out, it would be Black Pioneer on Amazon Prime or His Name Is Green Flake if you go to like Deseret Book.
As the the Spiritual and Religious Curator at the BYU Museum of Art, Maddie Blonquist approaches her work with both familiarity and discovery.
She recently oversaw the creation of BYU MOA’s Earthbound and Heavenward, an exhibition organized around what Christian tradition often calls a “sacred distance”: the felt space between who we are and who we hope to become. Across more than five hundred years of art, Earthbound and Heavenward traces how artists have wrestled with that distance—and, just as often, how they have discovered heaven pressing close through ordinary gestures, domestic scenes, and quiet acts of attention.