The 80th Annual Spring Salon opens today at the Springville Museum of Art. As always, the exhibition is an array of Utah's finest art, running the gamut from traditional to visionary to modern.

With 271 works selected from 882 entries — including oil, watercolor, mixed media, fiber, assemblage, printmaking, drawing, sculpture and photography — this year's salon boasts the participation of some of Utah's best known and accomplished artists.

"I think the show is a little stronger in abstract than it has been in recent years," said Vern Swanson, director of the museum, "but we didn't have much — as we hardly ever do — installation work. But a lot of the artists gave us some great work."

The SMA's goal is to balance four primary areas of artistic concern: Modernism/Post-Modernism, Traditional/Impressionism, Visionary and Assemblage/Conceptual.

This year's jurors were Gary S. Metzner and Natalie Petersen. Metzner is the Midwest vice-president of Sotheby's Auction House in Chicago and director of 19th-20th Century American & European Art. Petersen has received art-related degrees from the University of Arizona and Brigham Young University. She also has museum education background.

"I was impressed with it overall," Petersen said. "There were more 2-D and 3-D works this year and so the selection was much greater. There was a lot of landscape, but it would have been nice to have had more figurative."

This year, members of the "Hundred Honored Artists" were guaranteed two pieces in the exhibit, so much of the artwork would be familiar to museum visitors.

The 80th Annual Spring Salon, which runs through June 30, is an exhibition that makes the journey to Springville worth the drive.

---

E-mail: gag@desnews.com