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Show SCENE The Park Record. Editor: Scott Iwasaki arts@parkrecord.com 435.649.9014 ex.113 PARK CITY FARMERS MARKET AT PCMR Park City Farmers Market will open at noon every Wednesday near the Silver King Lift at Park City Mountain Resort. The free weekly event features produce, breads, drinks, live music and crafts. For information, visit www.parkcityfarmersmarket.com. UTAH SYMPHONY’S DEER VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL: BEETHOVEN NO. 1 The Utah Symphony’s Deer Valley Music Festival will present a chamber orchestra performance that will include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, July 25, at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 1505 White Pine Canyon Rd. The program, conducted by Conner Gray Covington, will be performed by soprano Sarah Shafer. In addition to the Beethoven work, Shafer will perform pieces by Ligeti, Bach and Cantaloube. For information and tickets, visit www. deervalleymusicfestival.org. ‘KISSED BY GOD’ SPECIAL FILM SCREENING CONNECT Summit County and the Park City Film Series will present a special screening of the documentary “Andy Irons: Kissed by God,” not rated, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 26, at the Park City Library’s Jim Santy Auditorium, 1255 Park Ave. Tickets are $15. For information, visit www. parkcityfilmseries.com and connectsummitcounty.org/event/kissed-bygod. LIBRARIES ROCK: FREE SUMMER MOVIES AT THE SUMMIT COUNTY LIBRARY The Libraries Rock Summer Movie Series will continue at 6 p.m. on Thursday, July 26, with “Seymour: An Introduction,” rated PG, at the Summit County Library Kimball Junction Branch, 1885 W. Ute Blvd. The documentary, directed by Ethan Hawke, is about Seymour Bernstein, a pianist who gave up performing for teaching. For information, visit www. thesummitcountylibrary.org. AUTHOR EVENT AT DOLLY’S BOOKSTORE SATURDAY Avital Miller, author of “Healing Happens,” will read and sign her book from 2-3 p.m. on Saturday, July 28, at Dolly’s Bookstore, 510 Main St. The event is free and open to the public. For information, visit www. dollysbookstore.com. ANDERS OSBORNE WILL SING FOR FRIENDS, C-2 LOCAL TEEN’S PASSION IS PLAYING MUSIC, C-5 www.parkrecord.com C-1 WED/THURS/FRI, JULY 25-27, 2018 ‘Remnants’ are reminders of a classic style Meyer Gallery opens Mary Sauer solo show during monthly stroll SCOTT IWASAKI The Park Record Mary Sauer has created a career with subtle defiances. The painter, whose new solo exhibit “Remnants” will open Friday during the Park City Gallery Association’s monthly gallery stroll at Meyer Gallery, was continually told by her art professors that she couldn’t make a living selling portraits or figurative paintings that were inspired by Renaissance and Impressionist masters. “It felt like the teachers regarded the more classically painted subject matter that I liked were something of the past,” Sauer said. “They made it feel like the classical figurative works were holding modern art back in a lot of ways.” Today, her portraits and figurative works sell between $3,000 and $12,000 each, which makes her even more happy she fell in love with the figurative painters. “When I was a child, I wasn’t super excited about the modern art,” Sauer said. “The subject matter that I do today shows things that I have always been interested in, but told that I couldn’t do by my teachers.” The other element of her works that goes against the grain is her bright color palette. “One of the things that modern art has attacked in figurative art is the concept of beauty, and that includes colors,” said Sauer, who worked as a studio apprentice for artist Jeff Koons in New York for three years. “Colors are important to me. I use colors that have a pleasing and cooperative palette that work together in harmony.” To do this, the artist manipulates the colors so they aren’t exactly what can be seen in real life. “Some of the colors are more exaggerated,” she said. “This is a way I can find what colors are more pleasing than others, and that’s another stand of defiance for me.” “Remnants” will feature 20 paintings and three drawings. All but one of the works were created within the past year. “I’m usually drawn to a figure within a work, but several of my paintings in this show actually takes the figure out of the composition,” she said. “Some of the paintings are just interior scenes.” Sauer’s go-to tool is oil. “I like when I put the mark down it doesn’t dry for a while, so I can keep working it,” she said. “Before I did oils, I spent a lot of time working with acrylics, but they would dry quickly. So working with oils has been liberating.” When Sauer starts working on a piece, she starts with an overall composite that usually starts with sketches or photographs. “With the photographs, I’ll manipulate them in Photoshop and change the overall design of the scene and how things fit within the image,” she said. Sauer is fascinated with the contrasts she can create in a painting. “I love working with different colors and skin tones,” she said. “I like the COURTESY OF MEYER GALLERY The oil paintings of Mary Sauer, such as “Chocolate Shop,” bring to mind scenic figurative works and classic Impressionism. Meyer Gallery will host an artist reception for Sauer on Friday, July 27, and open her new solo exhibit “Remnants.” effects of warm versus cool light and how they hit different objects.” While working on her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Utah, Sauer spent time developing the idea of how the portrait became a tool of display and showed vulnerability of the subject by painting scenes that weren’t perfectly composed. “I would use the concept of dressing up and examine how we portray ourselves on social media, and then I would incorporate how we use the idea of a store,” she said. “There is a painting in the show that is a self portrait that I posed myself in front of objects that are in an antique store, and I took this idea of what are we comfortable with other people seeing versus who we actually are.” The artist instinctively knows when a painting is done, but that doesn’t mean the work is actually finished. “I know it’s time to stop when one more stroke will start to mess with the composition,” Sauer said. “I like to leave my paintings a little unfinished in some places and more finished in others. It’s about taking the higher finish to the places that are more interesting in a composition. It’s more important to have an interesting brush stroke somewhere rather than paint every little detail that I see.” Sauer’s love for classical figurative paintings developed when she was a child in the rural South. “I would look at paintings in books and thought they were the most wonderful things in the whole world,” she said. “I grew up in a small town in Kentucky and there wasn’t much to do. But my mom would take me to the Please see Sauer, C-12 COURTESY OF MEYER GALLERY “Anna in White Shop” highlights painter Mary Sauer’s concept of placing a figure in a store setting. |