Each year, students from across the UVU Department of Art & Design collaborate on the creation of the next installment in the department’s Fine Art Book series, a student-led publication that serves as a defining project of their graduation year. This summer, the department proudly received three separate publishing awards, highlighting two of these student-led works:UTopia: State of Abstraction and Ever Arriving: Highlands to Islands.
The winner of Best Art Book in the 2025 International Book Awards, UTopia represents universal questions students explore in the book as well as the sole focus
and location for the artwork: the beautiful state of Utah.
“I had a great experience working on UTopia,” said Kenya Heiner, who earned a Bachelor of Fine Art in Sculpture from UVU during her time working on the book. “My project, the Colorado River Plateau
series, was inspired by the way Utah residents use water to change the face of the
Utah landscape. It was a special project, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to
work on it.”
Ever Arriving, the most recently published book in the series, won a silver medal in the Best Coffee Table Book category of the International Publisher Book Awards (IPPY) and Student Second Place for Book Covers + Jackets in the 2025 PRINT Awards. The journey to from ideation to publication of this book evolved over time, beginning as an exploration of Scottish author and poet Robert Louis Stevenson’s life in Scotland and Samoa, then morphing into a broader theme: the transformative experience of travel.
Racheal LeSueur is an interdisciplinary artist and now a School of the Arts graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking. As a contributor to Ever Arriving, she found herself resonating with the book’s metamorphic theme. “Traveling to gain inspiration is something that all artists hopefully get the chance to do,” LeSueur said. “I’ve been fortunate in my life to travel to many places, and each place has molded me into the artist and person I am today. All these experiences will continue to inspire me for the rest of my life.”
Cross-campus partnerships have also been a staple feature of the series, with work from the Department of English, the Department of Music, and the Culinary Arts Institute highlighting the strength of UVU's commitment to interdisciplinary education. “Not many arts programs provide opportunities for collaborative print publications like this,” explained Melissa Barrett, Co-Director for the book series and the instructor over the Fine Art Book series course. “This unique project really allows the students to gain a wider range of knowledge and skill that they might not get from other schools.”
The upcoming installation in the Fine Art Book series will focus on the history and invention of photography. Students travelled across historic sites in Spain and France earlier this summer to learn more about the origins of this foundational art medium, gathering inspiration for their next book which will be published in 2026. For more information or to purchase one of the current publications, please visit https://www.uvu.edu/arts/books/.
