Artists In Residence
Explore our Artist-in-Residence program, featuring a new Latino/Hispanic artist each month. In collaboration with Artes de Mexico en Utah, this exciting program brings art back to the community and encourages The Leonardo visitors to interact with local artists, ask questions, and observe several finished art pieces on display. The goal of this program is to encourage diverse artistic interpretation and to facilitate cross-cultural community-revitalization with a special focus on sharing the history, ideas, and lived experiences of our Latinx population with a wider audience.
Ven y conoce nuestro programa mensual de artista residente, que destaca la obra de artistas locales identificados como latino/hispano. Esta iniciativa en colaboración con la organización Artes de México en Utah, hace del arte, una participación colectiva e invita a los visitantes del museo The Leonardo a interactuar con artistas locales, conocer su obra en marcha y exposición. El objetivo de este programa es crear un espacio de interpretación artística que represente y reconozca la diversidad multicultural latinoamericana con el fin de compartir ideas y experiencias a través del arte, que permitan ampliar el conocimiento cultural.
This program is included with General Admission or membership to The Leonardo.
Artist In Residence Monthly Schedule
Stop by the Art Studio every Saturday and Sunday to meet the month’s featured artist in residence. Learn more about each artist below.
Jazmin Guzman is an image based artist who focuses on the intricacies of interpersonal relationships. Her exploration of alternative processes pushes the boundaries of traditional photography to create evocative pieces that engage and resonate with viewers. By experimenting with these alternative photographic techniques, she creates art that not only captures the essence of human connections but also invites viewers to engage with her work on a profound and interactive level.
I was born and raised in Puebla Mexico, surrounded by independent, strong and ahead of their time women. From a very young age I tried to show everything I had learned, unlearned and especially, what I felt and feel. For this reason, from the age of 15 I began to take photography and become interested in the arts.
I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Communication with honors in 2020, which allowed me to refine my audiovisual technique. I started working at a Foundation as a Communication Coordinator in Mexico City, a place where I learned more about the human, community and beneficial side of portraying realities for a change in the world.
Immigrating to the United States in 2022, I began to look for how to find myself again, how to understand my identity far from home and I dedicated most of my time to experimenting, creating, going out without fear. One of my safe places was to connect with the Utah art scene, because art speaks to us in the same language, caresses our hearts, comforts our emotions.
What I seek to portray with my photography and video are relationships, links and sensitively show the context that embraces us, through places, nature, things. I seek to include details of the space to tell stories through objects of the people portrayed.
I have volunteered twice in organizations linked to art, first at UMOCA and then at Artes de México in Utah. At the same time, I identified the ideas that drive my creation: belonging, being a woman and love in the community.
Belonging is a complex and at the same time common idea, as all human beings seek belonging, I began to think more about it when I moved from a country where everything and everyone was different from what I had known for 25 years. I also realized that I was not the only one, many people are constantly looking for where to belong, how to connect and avoid isolation.
On the other hand, a fundamental pillar for me is to understand being a woman from the deconstruction of what we were taught for centuries that implied, from an aesthetic point of view, roles, attitudes and ideas in general, this is what my current project is about where I comment about women in the kitchen and how this idea can have positive and also questionable sides.
Finally, what moves my life is love in community, being the first one I met, my family. Thus I have biographical series of the older adults who surround me, people close to me and now, circles that have shown me how the world needs to look at us and be for others.
I create large-scale, painting-like relief sculptures. The works feature peaks and valleys, cracks, rough and smooth surfaces, brilliant and opaque elements, and are evocative of eroded landscapes, time-weathered walls, and topographical maps. They are representative of a personal map-making and grounding process that examines the physical properties of my immediate surroundings.
I was born in the coastal city of Santos, Brazil, and my family immigrated to Canada when I was ten years old–from there, I went on to move a total of forty times. The experience of being uprooted, and forced into a near-constant state of transition, adaptation, and assimilation has profoundly shaped me. Throughout these experiences, I have established relationships with these new places through my artwork; by soaking canvases in the pacific ocean off the coast of Hawaii to submitting artworks to subzero temperatures in Canada, to see the effects of the elements and environment.
My current body of work is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I have lived for four years. Upon moving to a new place I make a point of visiting monuments and other unique natural features. From these excursions and hikes near my home, I collect materials that feel significant, like iron-rich dirt, sawdust, and charcoal for instance. Once I get in the studio, I begin layering the canvas with local newspaper and plaster, refurbished paint, and finally, the collected organic material. The process is fast and is intended to provide an environment that gives these collected materials agency to create form.
The goal of this body of work is to explore themes of place, home, belonging, immigration, and the passage of time. I believe that these artworks serve as tools for orientation and provide a means for gathering information about the environment in which they are created. I aim to offer an alternative way of considering ‘place,’ and to question what it means to find and ground one’s self in new surroundings.
This planet is not ours to destroy, but to respect and make it bloom as a light in our hands.
Wildlife conservation, environmental degradation, women’s rights, and the intersections between these topics, are the focus of my work. As an artist, I utilize different mediums to express my ideologies: films, photography, sculpture, and painting are how I have expressed my interests. Figures fascinate me, I use the dynamic nature of the body, human and non-human to experiment with structure and movement, the works that ensue act as a call. Ultimately, my goal being dialogue between the work and the audience, reflection. There is an overwhelming need to protect and teach others about earth stewardship, this is our home. My hope is that my art tells a story of consequence, a tale shedding light on the power of coexistence. Imagine a better way to live and leave this planet, with respect among all.
My art is a vibrant exploration of the human experience, distilled into colors, shapes and emotions. Through fluid brushstrokes and dynamic compositions, I seek to capture the beauty and complexity of life, inviting viewers to join me on a journey through layers of meaning and interpretation.
Bianca Velasquez (she/her) is a Salt Lake City local who has been involved with the arts and music community for over a decade. Velasquez is currently a freelance writer for several publications including Southwest Contemporary, Hyperallergic, and SLUG Magazine. As an artist, Velasquez works in acrylics, digital art, beadwork and more. After working as SLUG Magazine’s Managing Editor at 25, Velasquez has poured herself into her visual art, captivating her relationship to family, herself and the act of recording. Velasquez’ beadwork interrogates the process of negotiating space, both physically on the canvas and emotionally as she carves out space within herself for the lengthy task of self realization. Velasquez currently holds a Vice-Chair position for local non-profit Mestizo Arts and serves as a curator and event organizer for the Mestizo Gallery.
Artes de Mexico en Utah
This program is brought to The Leonardo in conjunction with our valued partner, Artes de Mexico en Utah. It is the mission of Artes de Mexico to build communities and a sense of belonging that is united by cultural connections through the appreciation and creation of art. Art in all its expressions is the pathway to reflect on our past and present to find commonalities among one another.
The Leonardo is proud to partner with Artes de Mexcio en Utah to provide exciting and educational cultural programing for all of our members and guests.
Salt Lake City Art Council
This program is sponsored by the Salt Lake City Arts Council.
