Springville Museum of Art hosts annual religious art show

Diversity of belief and spirituality is reflected in the Springville Museum of Arts 29th Annual Spiritual and Religious Art of Utah exhibition. The show, juried and hung in mid November, features works from Utah artists exploring the spiritual life of varied faiths, peoples and denominations. The exhibit will remain up through January 18.

Julie Hall, lead museum educator for the exhibition, said the celebration of spiritual experiences represented in the exhibit finds commonalities amongst varying beliefs.

This show celebrates the diversity of perspectives, faiths, and religious traditions in Utah, but it also seeks to find common ground amid diversity, Hall said. Our educational focus is on the sacred spaces, shared stories, and simple symbols that our visitors can find and relate to whether the artist is Jewish, Muslim, Christian, etc.

The dozens of pieces in this years exhibit encompass artwork from a range of media and styles, including a floor-to-ceiling installation of the Salt Lake City Temple made out of glass Coke bottles and an intricate cast bronze sculpture of an angel. Also exhibited are more traditional pieces created using oil, charcoal and pastels, as well as photography.

We have some exquisite oil paintings of very traditional religious subjects, but we also have symbolic installations and abstract pieces that prompt contemplation and reflection, Hall said. The exhibition is full of profound and beautiful pieces that are inspiring and powerful.

The exhibition was juried last month, with three artists claiming top spots. Placing third amongst the winners was Michael Hall with his bronze, Heart of Sorrow. Glenda Gleave took second with her oil-on-linen piece, Vessels of the Lord, The Garden Farewell. And Sean Diediker claimed first with his oil painting, Medicine Man.

Diediker, a Spanish Fork artist, called on his familys history with the Navajo of New Mexico for the inspiration behind his painting. Medicine Man depicts a Native American in Western hat and traditional Native American robes. Diediker created the painting from numerous photos taken during the years his grandfathers operated a trading post at Star Lake, New Mexico.

The post had dirt floors, Diediker said. My grandfather basically started from scratch and traded rugs and textiles with the local Navajo. The Navajo took my moms family in as their own.

In a nod to his roots, Diediker had a traditional smudge blessing where cedar, sage, sweetgrass and tobacco were burned in an abalone shell and the smoke spread with eagle fathers over the painting and artist performed by Winston Mason, a Native American from the Mandan/Hidatsa Nation of North Dakota. Diediker believes he owes the success of Medicine Man to the traditional blessing.

He blessed it a week before the show and basically said that wherever this painting goes, whatever home or gallery it ends up in, it will be blessed," he said. "Obviously that blessing worked.

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Springville Museum of Art hosts annual religious art show