Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists author event preview 

• Gibbs Smith Publishing

Anyone who has followed the art scene in Utah for any length of time knows that it's a vibrant and exciting one. But it comes into focus when you're looking at one massive volume of proof—all 400-plus pages of it.

The Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists marks the culmination of a multi-year project undertaken by several local arts luminaries, including former Utah Museum of Fine Arts curator Donna Poulton; retired Springville Museum of Art director Vern Swanson; Swanson's daughter and arts scholar Angela Swanson Jones; and Springville Museum of Art board member Micah Christensen. Its A-to-Z pages contain profiles of more than 4,500 Utah artists, from legends like V. Douglas Snow, Trevor Southey and Lee Deffebach through more contemporary creators, building on the work that was done for the original Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists, published in 2000.

According to Poulton, it's not possible to overstate the importance of the initial work done for that earlier volume—whose creators included Vern Swanson and celebrated Utah art historian Robert Olpin—particularly considering the time period in which they were working on it. "You have to think of pre-internet and post-internet," Poulton says. "They had to go through microfilm at the libraries, research old newspapers. They had to do hard work of looking for artists. That was groundwork that we didn't have to do this time."

It's also not possible, Poulton believes, to give enough credit to Gibbs Smith Publishing, which published the 2000 Dictionary, and approached Swanson and Poulton in 2017 about working on a follow-up. "If not for Gibbs Smith, Utah would not be on the map," she says. "We can't emphasize his importance enough. He was an artist, grew up near Laconte Stewart. And he had the benefit that he had a company willing to do these big expensive books."

With the charge to work on the new Dictionary of Utah Fine Artists in hand, Poulton and Swanson then began the arduous process of deciding which artists would and would not be included, considering how many new potential entries there were just in terms of the 20 years that had passed between volumes. Difficult decisions were required, including removing artisans like weavers and potters, and choosing not to include more contemporary architects. Perhaps the hardest decision was the one not to include photography this time around; "That was painful," Poulton admits.

Among those who were included were those who were really at the vanguard of creating a fine arts scene in Utah. "We decided that all of the artists that were in the original book, up to about 1940/1950, would stay," Poulton says. "Those were artists working when there really weren't any galleries, and it was hard to make a living. We kept them because they were kind of few and far between."

Beyond that nod of respect to the old guard, Poulton describes a "triage method" that evaluated artists based on criteria including participation in juried or curated exhibitions—basically, that other artists and experts over the years had found the work worthy of inclusion in galleries, competitions and other key showcases. Additional guidelines included coverage of the artists in publications as "artists to watch," as well as whether the artist in question made their living solely from art.

Even creating such criteria resulted in a massive number of entries, and the possibility of a book that might never be finished. Indeed, according to Poulton, if not for the fact that Gibbs Smith set a specific deadline for receiving the content, the process of adding new entries might still be ongoing. "Gibbs Smith finally said, 'Okay it's due on this date,' and I think Vern on the last day was still trying to get people in," Poulton says with a laugh.

The massive resulting volume might be seen as intimidating, but Poulton believes it's not just the kind of book that would take up space on a reference shelf in a gallery. "Anybody who collects art would want to have this," she says "Even if you're at a garage sale, and you find a piece of art, you'd want to be able to look this person up. Other artists might like to have the book. And we have around 240 images, so it's also just kind of eye candy in a way."

Perhaps most significantly, she believes, it's a chronicle of why it's actually important to think about "Utah art" as distinctive, and worthy of this kind of exhaustive research. "We probably have more artists per capita than any state, and we were actually talking about that, wondering why," Poulton says. "It started with Brigham Young sending artists to Paris, and having them come back so they could have arts in different temples. We had a theater before we had a tabernacle. Traveling artists stopped here because of the railroad. It has to do with the beauty, with so many landscape artists coming here. When we say Utah art, we're talking about celebrating the state as a whole."