The artists who applied for the 2021 Performing Arts Fellowship demonstrated extraordinary talent. Applicants represented many roles across Utah’s dance field, including dancers, choreographers, educators, arts organizers, dance filmmakers, interdisciplinary artists, and more.

The six fellowship awardees possess bold visions for the future of dance. Not only are the awardees exceptional dance professionals, but they are leaders and advocates for their respective forms. Recognizing the transformative power of dance, they have harnessed it to impact the lives of countless students, audiences, and community members. In the midst of extreme challenges, including a global pandemic and reckoning with systemic racism, the awardees find themselves at a pivotal moment of their careers. I look forward to following the work of these visionary dance artists and leaders to see how they will continue to inspire communities in Utah and beyond.

*For full statement about each artist please visit the Performing Arts Fellowship page.

This is a precarious moment in which to look at, examine, and make works of art. After the events of the last year––namely the protests following the murder of George Floyd, the violence at the U.S. Capitol, and more than a year of quarantine amid a deadly global pandemic––it is an uncertain moment in which to simply exist in American society. And, like spring, it is also a moment of incredible hope, renewal, and dramatic change. The applicants to this year’s Utah Visual Arts Fellowship reflect the rich diversity of Utah’s artists and their various communities and cultural identities. I was excited to see the work of artists at various points in their professional career, from artists just out of graduate school to self-taught mid- and late-career artists working in several disciplines. 

The winners of this year’s Utah Visual Arts Fellowship––Mitchell Barton, Annelisse Duque, Russell Albert Daniels, Levi Jackson, Anna Laurie Mackay, and Colour Maisch––are indicative of the depth, breadth, and quality of artistic talent found in Utah. They also reflect the cultural, generational and disciplinary diversity of this year’s applicant pool. The winners’ respective practices reflect the shifting artistic, social, and cultural landscape of Utah and the United States and their historical and political undercurrents. 

Artists like Russell Albert Daniels and Annelisse Duque each use their practice as a means of exploring and deeply examining their cultural heritage, Native American and Filippino-American respectively, while establishing their own unique voices in the process. The sculptural work of Colour Maisch is interested in what often goes unseen and exists beneath the surface, exploring and creating new forms in the process. Mitchell Barton’s interdisciplinary practice repurposes web development tools and digital media to explore and distort meaning and potentiality. Levi Jackson explores our relationship to the land and the natural landscape through video and sumptuous photographs which combine the Earth and manmade objects. Anna Laurie Mackay’s delicate works on silk tissue paper demonstrate the fragility and temporality of memory. The respective practices of the 2021 Utah Visual Arts Fellows reflect the incredible diversity of artistic practice in Utah, incredible quality of work, and themes deeply relevant to contemporary discourse.