UP(scale)
What happens when artists expand on their own work— this time, at a larger scale?
ABOUT (the works)
Artists come up with ideas for new work in many ways, of course. One creative strategy is to move forward by looking back—to find an idea and try it out as a small project, then, if successful, to evolve the concept further in scale and scope to inspire additional, related objects.
UP(scale) consists of three projects by artists commissioned by the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts to take one of their previous ideas and expand it into more complex, new work.
Creating in a series or returning to previous art for inspiration has powerful precedent in Contemporary Art. In 1964, Jasper Johns wrote himself a note in his sketchbook: “Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it. [Repeat.]” And in October 1960, La Monte Young created the following conceptual work, dedicated to Bob Morris:
Draw a straight line
And follow it.
In these simple principles, Johns and Young unleashed a strategy of creative discovery in the basic notion of taking a thing and continuing to develop it over time. These were to become foundational philosophies of Pop Art and Minimalism. Such seriality and generative exploration allow for ideas to riff off each other into related or repeated new things.
The three projects of UP(scale) are exciting examples of this process and include fiction, visual art, and screenwriting.
Explore the Projects:
The Investigator / The Observer
Text and images by Todd Robert Petersen and Zoë Petersen
This limited edition artists’ book tells two interwoven stories of survival, discovery, and transformation in a post-apocalyptic world through a tactile collector’s edition.
The Story
In The Investigator, a man stumbles upon an abandoned home in the Midwest after a global catastrophe. Inside, he finds food storage, scriptures, and journals left by a Latter-day Saint family—a culture he’s never encountered. The home becomes his refuge and awakens a spiritual journey that leads him to the ruins of the St. Louis Temple, where he leaves behind his own record before moving on.
For this expanded edition, author Todd Petersen created The Observer—a parallel narrative told through a journal and sketchbook brought to life by his daughter, illustrator Zoë Petersen. It follows a young woman traveling east in search of her parents, documenting her journey for the unborn child she carries.
The Collector’s Edition
These richly layered stories come together in a meticulously crafted object. The Investigator appears as handwritten pages on scraps of found paper—each one a trompe-l’œil artwork—that the reader reads in sequence, as if piecing together the character’s story long afterwards. The Observer continues the tactile contact through a faux journal and coptic-bound sketchbook. Additional items, including a Christmas card and Risograph pamphlets, complete the immersive experience.
Housed in a custom, handmade wooden case inspired by vintage military medical boxes, The Investigator / The Observer is both a compelling story and a collectible artifact.
Limited edition: $700 plus shipping.
Commercial edition: $24.95 (paperback) on Amazon.
“A fascinating glimpse into an evolving conception of how faith and loss intersect in a fallen world, using a post-apocalyptic backdrop as the setting. What if the Millennium doesn’t look anything like what we expected?”
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By the end of the fifth wave, people didn’t want to hear about staying safe and healthy. Liberty was the only word in play. People wanted freedom from tyranny or they wanted death. In the end, nobody had to choose. They got both. In a single season the sickness took half of those who remained.
There were vaccines for the early strains, but many refused to take them because someone on the internet said the shots would make them infertile or subject them to government satellite tracking devices. And then the virus mutated. Early bioengineering successes could not be duplicated. People grew impatient and followed any of a dozen pied pipers to their doom.
On top of that, the fires kept burning, inflaming people’s lungs. The virus exploited that weakness and took a third of those who remained. In the sixth wave, another half was lost. This is what they meant by cataclysm.
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It came to pass early one morning, just after dawn, the strap on one of my sandals broke. My foot slipped out and I fell forward, the weight of my belly pulling me down. I had just enough time to wrap you up in my arms and take the fall on my shoulder.
At that point I thought I might lay down in the grass. The temptation was so strong. I wondered what sense it would make to bring a child into this hopelessness. And from the pavement I saw a single monarch butterfly flap across the roadway silently, orange against the blue sky, just like the colors of the canyon. I sat up and saw another. To the south a great dusky cloud moved across the prairie. I got back on my feet and hobbled on, one sandal swinging from my hand. As I got closer to the point of intercepting them, the butterflies grew thicker, like leaves caught in the wind.
I read somewhere that a swarm of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope. I don’t know if that will even make sense to you, if that will be something that even exists in the world you’re coming to. Maybe it’ll be something you know from your world, that you’ll forget when you arrive. The beauty of those animals bore me on. Soon I was surrounded by them, moving through their shade, baptized in them. And that’s a word I don’t use lightly. I took strength in their migration. The beauty of their drive lent me the energy I needed.
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Todd Robert Petersen is an award-winning author of four novels and multiple short stories. His darkly humorous work, often set in the West, focuses on mystery and crime. Of his fourth novel, Picnic in the Ruins (Counterpoint Press, 2021), Library Journal’s starred review notes: “Petersen’s tightly written mystery plays out over the vast, unforgiving terrain on the Utah-Arizona border with a lineup of unforgettable characters…Hang on tight and enjoy the ride.” And Kirkus Reviews adds: “Part mystery; part quirky, darkly funny, mayhem-filled thriller; and part meditation on what it means to ‘own’ land, artifacts, and the narrative of history in the West… A fast-paced, highly entertaining hybrid of Tony Hillerman and Edward Abbey.”
Praising his previous book, It Needs to Look Like We Tried (Counterpoint Press, 2018), novelist Richard Russo said, “Todd Robert Petersen is crazy–talented, and the wild, weird, hilarious stories of It Needs to Look Like We Tried are just what’s called for in these bizarre, frightening times.” J. Aaron Sanders also writes: ”Todd Robert Petersen’s It Needs to Look Like We Tried carves out narrative space in the gaps of our lives, the moments we don’t often get to see, and the result is deliriously good, substantial in the best way, characters both broken and earnest, a reflection of the best and worst in ourselves.”
Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Petersen studied Film and then shifted to writing for the next two degrees at University of Oregon, Northern Arizona University, and Oklahoma State, where he studied with Brian Evenson and completed his PhD in Creative Writing and Critical Theory. He teaches Creative Writing and Film Studies as a Professor of English at Southern Utah University.
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Zoë Petersen is an illustrator from Southern Utah who finds delight and conceptual depth in the mundane. Since 2021 she has worked as an in- house illustrator for Deseret News. In 2024, her work was exhibited at the Southern Utah Museum of Art, Incandescent: Senior BFA Exhibition 2024.
Her work has garnered awards by 3x3: The Magazine of Contemporary Illustration, the Utah Society of Professional Journalists, and the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists. Her professional clients include Catapult Press, BYU McKay School of Education, Southern Utah University, Sagebrush Fiber Arts Guild, and Gumption Magazine. Her large mural for a community center, Johnson Art Center Mural, was completed in 2022. Her recent work includes design and illustration for Utah Humanities and the Southern Utah Book Festival. Petersen’s first illustrated book is Ruth Went Out (2024).
Speaking about Ruth Went Out, which focuses on mindfulness and noticing beauty in the world around you, Petersen said, “It’s about a girl who goes on a walk through her neighborhood. She takes [the walk] really slow: she looks closely at things, she picks things up, she drops them, and she plays on her way. It’s a wordless picture book, so the reader is going along on this walk with the character.”
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The Investigator/The Observer is produced in a limited edition of 11 signed and numbered copies for sale plus two artists’ copies.
Todd Robert Petersen (American, born 1969) and Zoë Petersen (American, born 2002)
The Investigator/The Observer (2025)Sketchbook: hardcover coptic-binding, 28 pp., digital reproductions of watercolors and drawings, 5 x 9.125 x .05 inches
Notebook: coil binding, 41 pp., digital reproductions of handwritten text, 9. 625 x .5 inches
Card: folded, digital reproductions of image and handwritten text, 4 x 6 inches
Plastic bag: 39 objects (loose notebook papers, envelope, printer paper, cardboard, paper bag fragment, notepad paper, register receipt, canning labels) digital printing on found and trompe-l’œil objects, dimensions variable, overall bag dimensions, 10 x 10.5 inches
Pamphlets: [to come]
Box: hinged-lid painted and stenciled wooden container, hardware, woven
Strap (40.5 x 1.75 inches); overall dimensions: 8.75 x 10.875 x 5 inches
Edition of 11 copies for sale, plus two artists’ copies.
$700 plus FedEx Ground shipping.Contact: Glen Nelson (Glen@centerforldsarts.org, or 917-386-3589).
Jesus Painting Painting
& Entrance
Paintings by Madeline Rupard
A Brooklyn Chapel Foyer
In Madeline Rupard’s 2023 image, Jesus Painting Painting, the artist created a painting of a painting. Harry Anderson’s The Second Coming (1979) is immediately recognizable to Latter-Day Saints. The depiction of Christ descending in white among a concourse of angels hangs in the Salt Lake Temple, and reproduced images grace many LDS sacred spaces, also having been duplicated innumerable times in Church magazines and digital platforms since it was commissioned, nearly five decades ago. Madeline turned the Anderson painting into a complex tableau of an LDS foyer, in Brooklyn, where she lived and worshipped while earning her MFA at Pratt Institute. After the small painting was exhibited at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum (2024) and the Church History Museum (2024-25) and seen by over 100,000 total museum visitors, she returned to the image with the idea to expand upon it conceptually, in some way, for this project.
The new work, Entrance
The new work is Entrance, much larger than Jesus Painting Painting, at 4 x 3 feet, and it concerns itself with another LDS chapel foyer, this one populated by what could be called an “uptown” painting. Christ and the Rich Young Ruler was painted by Heinrich Hofmann in 1889 and purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. for the fine-art endowed Riverside Church in New York City, where it is installed in an altarpiece in its Assembly Hall. The scripture it depicts challenges wealth as a prerequisite to enter the kingdom of God: (“Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” Matt. 19:21).
Madeline’s painting places the oft-reproduced Hofmann in its gilt frame hanging over a velvet couch, but there are tensions and ironies all around in the space’s decor, lighting, and the composition itself—each of which push and pull on notions of aspiration, comfort, luxury, utility, familiarity, banality, and sacredness.
Jesus Painting Painting (2023): $2300 SOLD
Entrance (2025) $5500 plus shipping.
“This space has a heart before we can say quite how.”
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Madeline Rupard describes her approach to painting this way: [The paintings] “consider the American landscape as one who has moved through it frequently and traveled across long distances. A sense of wonder and solitary, transient observation is instilled in her pictures—you are not here to stay, but always passing through.” She paints to describe contradictions: the suburban and the sublime, the sacred and the mundane, and the ancient and man-made running up against each other. Her work is also concerned with memory and time. Art, to her, is a reconciliation between the romantic and the realist.
In the last three years, her paintings have been exhibited in over a dozen group exhibitions—in New York, Park City, Brooklyn, Mesa, Salt Lake City, Provo, Statesboro, Georgia, and Somerset, UK. Her first book, Passages (Slow Worm Press, 128 pp.) was published in 2024. She is an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University.
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Madeline Rupard (American, born 1991)
Jesus Painting Painting (2023)
Acrylic on panel, 12 x 9 inches (framed)
SOLDEntrance (2025)
Acrylic on panel, 47.5 x 37.5 inches (unframed)
$5500 plus FedEx Ground shipping.Contact: Glen Nelson (Glen@centerforldsarts.org, or 917-386-3589).
‘93 Castrol
Screenplay and Photography
by Daniel Yen Tu
A cinematic object in its own right, ’93 Castrol is a multi-sensory experience that fuses storytelling, photography, and design into a singular collector’s edition.
The Screenplay
’93 Castrol is the debut feature-length screenplay by filmmaker Daniel Yen Tu. Set in mid-1990s Taiwan, the story follows three siblings on a high-stakes road trip: Da Ge, a small-time thief; Didi, an army deserter; and Xiaomei, a gifted aspiring fashion designer. When the brothers steal and attempt to sell a rare racecar to fund their sister’s education, the trio embarks on a journey from a southern fishing village to Taipei—pursued by gang rivals and haunted by a mysterious family curse.
The Limited-edition Artist’s Book
The book includes the full 87-page screenplay and 66 striking black and white photographs captured by the artist during a 2025 trip to Taiwan. Shot on both 35mm and 120 film using vintage cameras and a mix of Ilford, Lucky Films, and Eastman stocks, the images were developed in Rodinal and reflect the atmospheric textures of Taiwan’s landscape and urban life.
Housed in a custom black epoxy-coated MDF slipcase, the hardcover volume is topped with a miniature diorama of a Taiwanese highway, complete with stenciled asphalt and a 1:32 scale Revell Audi Sport quattro rally car—the same model that stars in the screenplay. Each slipcase is finished with a unique, artist-shot Instax Square photograph affixed to its underside.
Artist’s copy: $380 plus shipping.
Commercial edition: $29.95 (paperback) available on Amazon.
“The dynamic between the siblings and their story of connection, redemption, and success, resonated with me at such a human level, I never wanted to leave
them.”
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INT. RESTAURANT - NIGHT
Xiaomei looks crestfallen. Didi tears off his military patch, leaving a line of stitching in its wake.
DIDI (CONT'D)
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.
DIDI (CONT'D)
And this guy right here... is the king of lowlifery.He pats his brother on the shoulder.
DA GE
(false modesty)
Hey, hey.DIDI
Do you still have it?Da Ge glances over.
DA GE
Of course.DIDI
Let’s go see it.EXT. FAMILY HOME - GARAGE - NIGHT
The lights flick on in the cramped sheet-metal garage. Flies swarm the lights as the room is open to the night.
Da Ge, Didi, and Xiaomei step into the room. In the middle is a car underneath an old greasy canvas shroud.
Da Ge grabs the cloth and, with a flourish, pulls it away...
It’s a pristine 1985 GROUP B WORKS AUDI QUATTRO, wrapped in a perfect MONTE CARLO YELLOW LIVERY. CASTROL prominent on the front quarters. It’s a rally car—bold, brash, loud—a rocket designed for the road, more at home on a racetrack or a concours d’elegance than this dingy garage.
Didi looks at it in admiration. He carries the long thin package from earlier.
DA GE
My finest hour.Xiaomei looks at it too. They all walk around it, impressed.
DA GE (CONT'D)
This is how I beat the curse. Did I ever tell you that?Didi looks over and shakes his head.
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Daniel Yen Tu Is an independent film writer/director born in Melbourne, Australia. His parents immigrated to Australia from Taiwan, and his grandparents fled Southern China during the Cultural Revolution. Making movies since 9th grade, he is currently at work on two feature screenplays—both of which are funded—for a Sundance alum and another for an established indie director.
His 2019 student film, Stickup Kid, was nominated for five student Emmys and won three, for Best Cinematography, Best Sound, and Best Writing. He was a co-writer on the short horror film, The Angel (2024) starring Doug Jones (Barrett Burgin and Jess Burgin, dirs., co-writers) and La luna y el colibrí (2021) (Luis Fernando Puente, dir., co-writer).
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’93 Castrol is produced in a limited edition of 7 signed and numbered copies for sale plus one artist’s copy.
Daniel Yen Tu (Taiwanese-Australian, born 1993)
’93 Castrol (2025)Hardcover, 238 pp., 11 x 8.5 x .75 inches
Slipcase, medium density board coated in black epoxy, acrylic-painted diorama on cork, limited edition Revell Audi Sport quattro SMB RAC Rally 1984 model car, and unique photo on Instax Square, 12 x 9 x 1.75 inches
Edition of 7 copies for sale, plus one artist’s copy.
$380 plus FedEx Ground shipping.Contact: Glen Nelson (Glen@centerforldsarts.org, or 917-386-3589).
Acknowledgements
UP(scale) is a project conceptualized and produced by Glen Nelson on behalf of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts and made possible by its generous donors. The net proceeds from the sale of these works go to the Center to further its vision as the cultural and artistic hub for Latter-day Saints all over the world.
Product photographs: James Ransom
Painting photographs: Madeline Rupard
Rupard framing: James Talbot
Prospectus design and production: Glen Nelson
Because of the limited or unique nature of these artworks, requests will be filled in the order of their arrival. To discuss the works further or to place an order, contact Glen Nelson directly at glen@centerforlatterdaysaintarts.org or call/text him at 917-386-3589.