Mary’s Closet
Mary Farahnakian was a joint professor in the BYU Theatre and Media Arts (TMA) Department, Clothing and Textiles Department, and the School of Family Life from 1988 until her retirement in 2016. She taught history of costume, costume specialty, and costume design and construction. Mary was also an accomplished stage and television actress and an […]
Keeping
Artist’s Statement The art I make functions as portals; linking people, places and perceptions. I believe materials hold memory and through my art practice I investigate physical representations of generational care. My process is multi-faceted including quilting, sewing, painting, dying, gluing, stitching and more; creating layered compositions often stretched as paintings, built up on panels, […]
A Catholic Reads the Book of Mormon: Folk Carvings of Roman Śledź
A Catholic Reads the Book of Mormon: Folk Carvings of Roman Śledź presents a dozen never-before-seen wooden sculptures from the private collection of Walter Whipple to expand Book of Mormon visual culture and foster an interfaith appreciation for its universal story of faith. Śledź, a renowned Polish folk artist, and Whipple, a former associate professor […]
Celebration of Life: The Huntington & Bagley Studio
The Huntington-Bagley Studio, a photography studio operated by Elfie Huntington and Joseph Bagley in Springville, Utah from 1903 to 1936, advertised, “We go anywhere, anytime, to photograph anything.” With their distinctive lens of love, humor, and bucking of societal conventions, they beautifully documented the people of their time and place. Their photography captured the whimsical, […]
Playscapes
Megan makes art in response to her daily life. To her, nourishing her creative passions and nurturing her family are inextricably intertwined. She hopes that in doing so, her art will also resonate with others. Megan is currently pursuing an MFA at Brigham Young University while raising two sons with her husband in Provo, Utah.
The Birdhouse Project | Fall 2022
Since the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, London, design history can be mapped through technological developments, shifting cultural values, evolving economic centers, and popular design movements such as: art nouveau, art deco, streamlining, modernism, post-modernism, and deconstruction. Students research and present in class on historical and notable contemporary designers. The 2022 designer birdhouse […]
Árvores do Brasil | Trees of Brazil
Árvores do Brasil celebrates the diversity of Brazil’s literary and visual cultures by exploring the ties that bind artists, writers, and public intellectuals. In this sense, the exhibit considers some of the ways that Brazil’s genealogical imagination has evolved over time. How does the study of literature and culture reveal, conceal, contest, establish, and confirm genealogy? […]
Medieval Bookbinding: Methods, Materials, and Oddities
“Books are a uniquely portable magic,” Stephen King once wrote. They have the power to transport the reader away from their present situation and into a new place. For a historian, they are the means by which knowledge is kept safe through the decades or centuries. Though the information contained in books is frequently studied, […]
Guppets
Cancer: A Portrait of Survival
Artist Statement Ever since my mother’s bout with cancer, I have wanted to do a project like this. Thank you to the Office of Research and Creative Activities (ORCA) grant committee for their support in the creation of this body of work. The enduring strength of human character is so solid, however we seldom give […]