Catherine Downing has been a member of UVSC's Art & Visual Communications faculty since in 1996 where she teaches course in drawing, oil painting, and landscape painting. She received her BFA in Drawing from the University of Florida and her MFA in Painting from the University of South Florida.

Welcome to Utah 2003: Crafts & Photography, an annual statewide exhibition presented by the Utah Arts Council.

This year’s exhibition is a collaborative endeavor with the UVSC Woodbury Gallery. We thank Barbara Wardle, Director, and her staff for their hospitality, generosity, and cooperation in this collaboration. Also, thanks to Laura Durham, UAC Visual Arts Program for her assistance to this project.

This year we received artwork from 139 Utah artists. From those entries our guest jurors, Jan Doles and Jane Dillon selected 87 pieces by 61 artists. The Visual Arts Committee of the UAC Board endorses the jurors’ choices by presenting six cash awards that were selected by the two jurors. In addition, Traveling Exhibition cash honoraria will be awarded to artists from the exhibition for works selected to travel to sponsoring institutions throughout the state.

We thank our eminent jurors for the valuable contribution to this exhibition and Utah’s visual artists for their participation. The talent and creativity of the artists enrich the lives of those patrons who view the artwork in this annual exhibition.

Between them, Max Weaver and Peter Myer have about 140 years of art experience. They're retired from teaching, but neither has stopped working.

"I've been painting regularly," said Weaver, 86, who lives in Orem. "Until this last year, I did pottery, too. I'd throw pots in the morning, trim in the afternoon, and then decorate."

His partner in the show now open at the UVSC Woodbury Gallery, 68-year-old Provo resident Myer, said much of his own part of the exhibit consists of work he's done in the past 18 months. "Some of them, I'm still hoping to get finished in time," he said.

Weaver and Myers are both retired professors of art from Brigham Young University, and the two friends have crossed paths professionally and socially now and then over the years.

But when it comes to their work, they have little in common. Weaver calls himself a "traditional painter" who favors landscapes; Myer said he constantly experiments and will have several abstract pieces in the show.

Weaver has worked a lot with pottery; Myer dabbles in kinetic art.

They took different roads into the world of education, too.

Weaver grew up in Layton, where he credits his sixth-grade teacher with inspiring him to become an artist. "She had me do bulletin boards and so on, and that was really the thing that got me started into the art field," he said. "I liked the teachers at Davis High School, too. The teachers definitely have an influence, giving students these opportunities."

Thus motivated, he became a teacher himself. Myer, on the other hand, said he was initially drawn to education by another factor: sabbaticals.

"If you're a university professor, you can get a year off with pay if you're doing something that furthers your work and your career," he said, recalling what he learned as a 17-year-old in New Jersey when he met an art professor who was on just such a sabbatical. "I decided that being a university professor would be ideal, because it would give me a steady income -- I knew that being an artist was pretty chancy -- so it looked like university professor would be great."

Myer earned a degree in art from BYU in 1956 and an MFA from the University of Utah in 1959. He taught at University of Nevada Las Vegas for 10 years and at BYU for 28 years, retiring in 2000.

Weaver studied at Utah State University in Logan and taught at the University of Hawaii and the College of Southern Utah (now Southern Utah University) before moving to BYU in 1961. He retired in 1982.

"It's been fun to get ready for the show, and I hope that the people enjoy it," Weaver said. "I've had a great time producing it."

"Kuna Mola: Maintaining Tradition Amid Change"
May 15 - June 20, 2003

Most Kuna Indians of Panama largely adhere to their traditional way of life. Inhabiting some 50 islands off of Panama's Caribbean coast, the Kuna live in cane-and-thatch houses, sleep in hammocks, and travel by dugout to fetch drinking water from mainland rivers. Molas, the beautiful, decorative panels that comprise the front and back of Kuna women's blouses, have gained world renown as textile art.

Kuna Mola: Maintaining Tradition Amid Change provides insight into the material culture and traditions of the Kuna Indians through a collection of 50 molas, 15 color photographs, and supporting objects. The exhibition examines the mola as both textile art and cultural artifact. It also examines the Kuna lifestyle within the larger issue of maintaining tradition in the face of immense forces for change. Although they have been successful in adhering to their traditional ways, the Kuna have not stood still. This exhibition examines how they are changing and how they are holding their ground.

Molas are created by a reverse applique process in which two to five layers of cloth are basted together, then patterns cut through the layers, exposing the cloth below. Construction ranges from the simple to the complex. Designs run the gamut from geometric patterns and ritual objects, to Christian symbols, Spanish and English words, cartoon characters, and even advertising logos.