Exhibitions Open Apr 17 through May 29, 2026
Fri, Apr 17, 6-9pm: Opening Reception & Salt Lake Gallery Stroll
Fri, May 15, 6-9pm: Salt Lake Gallery Stroll
Susan Kirby: There is Nothing More Shocking than Joy
Exhibition
This exhibition draws from my life and the places that have shaped it, particularly my years living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and my home in Utah. My medium-sized acrylic paintings are autobiographical, referencing the spaces I lived in, the people and animals I love, and activities such as tango and hiking. Scenes of San Miguel’s architecture, festivities, cactus gardens, and jacaranda trees appear alongside Utah landscapes including the Great Salt Lake, Southern Utah, and references to Land Art. After undergoing heart surgery in Mexico, I began incorporating anatomical studies of my heart into the work. My somewhat naïve, visionary style blends reality with folklore, mythology, history, and spirituality.
Biography
Susan Jacobsen Kirby is a painter whose life has been shaped by travel, creativity, and outdoor exploration. Raised in an artistically engaged family, she spent parts of her childhood living in Connecticut and France before returning to Utah. She studied at Le Cordon Bleu and La Chambre Syndicale de La Couture Parisienne in Paris before committing to painting. Kirby has exhibited widely, including a solo exhibition at the Salt Lake Art Center in 1992. She lived for ten years in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, before returning to Salt Lake City in 2022 with her cats Brigitte and Frida. She enjoys tango, hiking, skiing, and time in Utah’s desert landscapes.
Hannah Vaughn: Reliquaries
Exhibition
The reliquaries are empty, save, perhaps, a small pile of silken viscera left behind, and our own projections into their shells. Resembling roof, ribcage, boat, kite, or vessel, they are precariously tethered, on the edge of departure, aloft on a breath of grief. Crafted of cedar, textile, paper, porcelain, beeswax, etc., they ring of home, holding small spaces in which you imagine your former self, or perhaps your mother.
Biography
Hannah Vaughn is an architect, educator and artist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is a co-founder of VY Architecture, with offices in Utah and Idaho, and teaches at the University of Utah School of Architecture. Hannah’s work is centered around the primacy of making, material resonance, and the technical aspect of constructing. The connection to material and place is an integral part of her practice and teaching - creating work that frames human experience through fundamental human perceptions.
