Scotti Hill

Photo by Julia M Cameron on Pexels

About Me

Scotti Hill (she/her) is a Utah-based arts journalist, critic, and lawyer. In addition to teaching art history at Westminster College, she’s a regular contributor to Southwest Contemporary and 15 Bytes: Utah’s Art Magazine and has written for Hyperallergic, Deseret News, New Art Examiner, and the Center for Art Law.

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My Latest Work

Southwest Contemporary •

Work in Progress with Stephanie Leitch

Salt Lake City-based Stephanie Leitch, known for her labor-intensive and mesmerizing installations, continues honing her craft in recent exhibitions that comment on life’s murky truths.

Staring down the length of a long table arranged with seemingly infinite dots, one’s line of sight can detect a partition between wires that hold plastic disks hovering above the table. The effect creates a dizzying visual mirage that entices and dislodges the sense of self.

Indeed, the installations of Stephan
Southwest Contemporary •

Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts Unveils New Gallery in a Celebration that Commemorates Past, Present, and Future

The Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts, a Salt Lake City organization that promotes marginalized artists, aims to revitalize its mission with a new exhibition space centered on community-based programming.

SALT LAKE CITY—The area west of Salt Lake City’s downtown has long been one of the most ethnically diverse in the region—and also one of the most historically and intentionally marginalized.

A train line and a freeway, which divides downtown from Salt Lake’s “Westside,” symbolize a differ
Southwest Contemporary •

Russel Albert Daniels Exposes Native Enslavement and Genocide in the Southwest

Photojournalist Russel Albert Daniels posits his family history as a bridge to larger investigations into Indigenous histories and the legacy of colonial violence and displacement in the American Southwest.

SALT LAKE CITY—Russel Albert Daniels recalls hearing stories about his ancestor Rose from an early age. Their shared name was forged by Rose’s marriage to Aaron Eugene Daniels, the white man who trafficked her from a series of abductors, in a harrowing journey from what is now Arizona to pre
Southwest Contemporary •

A Greater Utah Surveys the Artistic Output of an Entire State

While many of the figures in UMOCA’s A Greater Utah are familiar, the ambitious scope of the project allows for new perspectives outside of the state’s metropolitan center.

Whereas the Utah Museum of Fine Arts serves as the state’s preeminent collecting institution, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art lends credibility to the state’s vibrant artistic output. By providing a critical venue to contextualize Utah artists, UMOCA also legitimizes the state’s place within and acknowledgement of import
Southwest Contemporary •

Kheng Lim and Colour Maisch Team Up at Bountiful Davis Art Center

Although the thematic connection feels strained, the pairing of works by Kheng Lim and Colour Maisch creates a visually rich and compelling exhibition that invites us to relish process and material.

An artist’s chosen medium reveals much about their artistic philosophy and provides tantalizing clues about the labor and dedication to their chosen craft. While painting carries a storied and culturally rich history, mixed media has in the last century or so challenged preconceived notions of art—n
Southwest Contemporary •

Work in Progress with Hayley Labrum Morrison

Hayley Labrum Morrison’s eerily provocative work invites viewers to contemplate the formation of identity, gender, and body politics within über-religious patriarchal systems.

Hayley Labrum Morrison grew up in Utah as a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After graduating with her BFA in studio art from Brigham Young University in 2008, she left Utah for Chicago and then Australia before landing in Austin, Texas, where she’s been for the past eight years. Living in
Southwest Contemporary •

Eric J. García’s Latest Community Mural and Video Game Allow Players to Interact with Colonial “Aliens”

Ogden Contemporary Arts’s second artist in residence Eric J. García invites us to scrutinize the principles upon which American history and identity are based in a dazzling and multifaceted artistic project.

OGDEN, UT—Ogden’s history as a railroad town sets it apart from the predominantly white settlements promulgated by Mormon pioneers, and continues to be one of the few Utah cities known for its ethnic diversity. It’s here that New Mexico-based artist Eric J. García has developed the multi-fa
Southwest Contemporary •

Curator Profile: Jessica Kinsey at Southern Utah Museum of Art

Jessica Kinsey heads a small but growing team at the Southern Utah Museum of Art, a Cedar City institution that aims to replace culturally insular stereotypes with a community focus.

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, located on the University of Oklahoma campus, boasts a 40,000-square-foot exhibition space and a storied global art collection. It’s here where Jessica Kinsey received a hands-on approach to curatorial practice and museum administration, skills she would foray to her current role a
Southwest Contemporary •

Benjamin Winans: 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023

Albuquerque-based Benjamin Winans’s sculptural works contend with the impact of Christian nationalism within national memory and the artist’s own lived experience.

Benjamin Winans takes an interdisciplinary approach to explore both the personal and the historical implications of his Southern upbringing. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, his scholarly methodology incorporates drawing, sculpture, installation, video, audio, and printmaking to contend with the impact of Christian nationalism within
Southwest Contemporary •

Ahní Rocheleau: 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023

Ahní Rocheleau is a Santa Fe-based artist whose interdisciplinary work collapses the distance between humans and nature, exhibiting a deep care for the environment that bridges art and activism.

Ahní Rocheleau’s work uses tactile materials to challenge the notion of environment as decidedly separate from human existence. Since 2017, she has used a most interesting and perhaps unconventional medium—the tumbleweed—as a harbinger for ideas of cultural memory, human connectedness to nature, and cli
Southwest Contemporary •

Karma Henry: 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023

Karma Henry is a Paiute, Italian, and Portuguese artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, whose acrylic paintings consider the landscape as site for both the literal and personal embodiment of place.

Karma Henry is a Paiute, Italian, and Portuguese artist whose acrylic paintings consider the landscape as site for both the literal and personal embodiment of place. Such paintings combine rich color with symmetrical patterns “borrowed from regional architecture, basketry, pottery, geometric landmarks
Southwest Contemporary •

Jiyoun Lee-Lodge Tackles the Bogeyman of Loneliness in Waterman

Jiyoun Lee-Lodge of Salt Lake City grapples with themes of isolation and belonging—in comic book-style works influenced by Korean folk art—in her ongoing Waterman series.

SALT LAKE CITY—Invariably, each of us has encountered the acute vulnerability accompanying loss, a life transition, or perhaps self-doubt. One’s identity may falter when pulled apart from the comforts of routine and home, rendering us a stranger among our fellow humans.

For Jiyoun Lee-Lodge, this feeling of isolation—amid bot
Southwest Contemporary •

The Gallery as Slaughterhouse: Tamara Kostianovsky’s Mesmerizing Flesh at Ogden Contemporary Art

Mesmerizing Flesh, Tamara Kostianovsky’s exhibition of textile sculptures, encapsulates a compelling, if harrowing contradiction between industrial violence and the beauty of corporeal and organic forms.

Tamara Kostianovsky’s exhibition Mesmerizing Flesh employs a spellbinding formal process, provocative fabric re-appropriation, and an unflinching phenomenological experience, to hook both art novice and connoisseur alike.

The Argentinian American multimedia artist uses a dazzling process where
Southwest Contemporary •

Between Life and Land: Material at the Kimball Art Center, Park City

Between Life and Land: Material at Kimball Art Center stuns not by virtue of its star artists, but from those that highlight the wonder and horror of our natural world.

The first of a three-part series of exhibitions, Between Life and Land: Material showcases ten artists whose works grapple with a subject at once ubiquitous and integral—land.

While the inclusion of titans Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson reminds viewers of the state’s storied connection to the Land Art movement, the pair’s video
Southwest Contemporary •

“Great” Salt Lake No More: How Utah’s Worsening Drought is Inspiring Artistic Reflection and Activism

The depletion of Utah’s Great Salt Lake is a symbol of the state’s worsening water crisis and has, throughout the past few years, inspired a diverse array of artistic responses.

For the estimated forty million inhabitants who rely on the Colorado River, the West’s worsening drought is an existential threat. Elected officials thus far have only managed lip service, not the action necessary to avoid the catastrophic outcomes sure to follow from rampant mismanagement and the establishment of massi
Hyper •

What Does It Mean to Be a Latina/x Artist?

SALT LAKE CITY — In a small but impactful exhibition at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA), independent curator María del Mar González-González brings together the work of four stylistically divergent Latina/x artists.

Beyond the Margins: An Exploration of Latina Art and Identity succeeds in two critical respects. First, it demonstrates the simple fact that not all Latine artists make work exclusively about their own ethnic experience. Second, identity-based art may seek not simply to
Southwest Contemporary •

Utah’s New State Flag, To the Disappointment of Some, Won’t Depict the State Fish Wielding the State Firearm

During the Utah state and Salt Lake City flag competitions, residents fall in love with Grant Miller’s dark-horse design that’s heavy on clowning state symbols and imagery.

SALT LAKE CITY—As Utah’s campaign to select a new state flag nears completion, vexillologists, along with amateur flag artists and state lawmakers, are having a moment.

In recent years, local politicians have initiated two distinct campaigns to refresh the Salt Lake City flag and the Utah state flag. City and state official
Southwest Contemporary •

Fate of Utah's Outsider Art Site The Christian School Remains In Flux

Salt Lake City’s Christian School, the brainchild of late artist Ralphael Plescia, is in limbo as an arts organization’s preservation efforts are hampered by the recent sale of the property.

SALT LAKE CITY—Along an inconspicuous stretch of Salt Lake City’s State Street exists a most unusual building, artist Ralphael Plescia’s Christian School. The exterior structure, adorned with low-relief sculptures of religious symbols and a painted panel of Christ, manages to stand out in a city that isn’t
Hyper •

What Rights Do Artists Have When Their Work Is Destroyed?

SALT LAKE CITY — Once located on the edifice of the Catholic Community Services (CCS) building in downtown Salt Lake City, artist Ruby Chacon’s sprawling and colorful mural was a recognized site, a symbol of remembrance and faith.

The mural, entitled “Hope and Determination” (2007), depicts the Virgin Mary at the center of the composition, flanked by figures whose bodies curve inward to form a circular enclosure. The figures are depicted atop radiant blue with tendril-like plant elements radiat
Hyper •

The Horror and Banality of American Racism

SALT LAKE CITY — In the realm of postmodern art fare, video art can be conceptually difficult to comprehend. At once keenly familiar in a world replete with television and film, it is perhaps this association that renders experimental works theoretically challenging, not simply for the art novice.

In a recent exhibition at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Arts (UMOCA) entitled Who’s Coming to Save You, San Francisco-based artist Christy Chan defies the obtuse associations that can sometimes acco
Hyper •

Wildfire Ash as a Medium

While many rejoice at the fact that climate change is comprising a larger role in political parlance, its manifestations are disparate and geographically specific.

Indeed, residents of the Western United States have visualized the Anthropocene — the current geological phase of increased human intervention in the planet’s ecosystem — in worsening drought conditions, drying lake beds, and increasingly frequent wildfires. Many of us recall the haunting early pandemic-era imagery of individuals wan
Southwest Contemporary •

“Pornographic” Mural in Salt Lake City Suburb Causes Confusion, Outrage

Midvale, Utah recently instituted a cultural revitalization project to enhance its downtown. A large mural depicting two nude figures and a ghoulish specter has become the talk of the town.

Midvale, Utah is situated between Salt Lake City and “Silicon Slopes,” a much-lauded hub of technological and entrepreneurial fervor that attracts throes of outsiders to our stunningly beautiful, yet landlocked state. And while Utah’s tech ventures and lightning hot economy are touted by politicians and resi
Southwest Contemporary •

Salt Lake City Bids Farewell to John Sproul’s Beloved Nox Contemporary

John Sproul, a prominent local artist and owner of Nox Contemporary, will close the gallery following the end of Jared Steffensen’s exhibition Idem, Norms, Dorms Mine on November 4, 2022.

SALT LAKE CITY—John Sproul is well known to many in the Utah arts community. A gregarious, if soft-spoken figure, Sproul crafts textured paintings that encase human figures in layers of pigment, inviting a rumination on both the formal qualities of his artmaking and the psychology of his subjects alike.

Until
Hyper •

Mary Toscano Draws a Sense of Foreboding and Loneliness

SALT LAKE CITY — Artist Mary Toscano’s work is contemplative and methodical. Her drawings betray the patient and meditative process underlying an artistic craft which requires constant repetition to master. Her exhibition In Solution, on view at Salt Lake City’s Alice Gallery, posits water-laden environments with eroded household items such as eyeglasses and gardening tools as allegories for the frailty of memory.

The salience of this message highlights both the literal — the very real environm
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