Artist Panel: Relative Truths

Dive deeper into the art on view at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts with this free artist panel!

The new exhibition, Relative Truths, presents the work of University of Utah’s Department of Art & Art History faculty members. The exhibition addresses themes of isolation, division, contested histories, cultural anxiety, dismantling of human rights, and the persistent creativity of the human mind. Explore these themes and learn more about three Relative Truths artists and their work: Vanessa Romo, Zak Jensen, and Beth Krensky. The panel will be moderated by exhibition curator Peter Hay, Associate Director, PROArtes México. Join the artists in the galleries afterward.

Meet the Artists:

Vanessa Romo is an artist and educator working in Salt Lake City. As an artist, Romo seeks dialogue about human experiences through her creations. Romo was born in Mexico City, received her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Utah, and now works and teaches in Salt Lake City. Romo’s art explores the way humans process issues surrounding gender, identity, mortality, and environment. In her work, clay and the figure act as gateways into these existential topics. Romo currently teaches at the University of Utah & Westminster College. Romo’s work has been exhibited nationally, most recently in the UMFA and UMOCA.

Beth Krensky is a Distinguished Professor of Art Teaching. She received her formal art training from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. She was one of five founding members of the international artist collective, the Artnauts. Her work is intended to provoke reflection about what is happening in our world as well as to create a vision of what is possible.

She holds an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Educational Foundations from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her writing addresses community-based art education, youth activist art, and art for social change. Her co-authored book (with Seana Lowe Steffen), Engaging Classrooms and Communities through Art, is used widely in the community-based art education field.

In 2022, Krensky was named the Utah Higher Education Art Educator of the Year and in 2019, she was selected as one of Utah’s 15 Most Influential Artists. Among her academic honors, she has been awarded the Presidential Scholar, Public Service Professor, and Distinguished Teaching awards from the University of Utah. She was selected as one of five performance art finalists for the 16th Arte Laguna Prize and had a 20-year retrospective of her work at Yale University in 2022.

Zak Jensen is an artist, designer, and teacher exploring how meaning is made, found, shifted, and lost through the interplay of words, images, and objects. Born in Salt Lake City as a fifth-generation Utahn, he grew up spending formative time in the awe-inducing deserts and mountains of the western U.S. while trying to reconcile the way the world seemed and the way it was explained by the region’s historically dominant culture. Zak attended the University of Utah, earning a BFA, and Yale University, where he earned an MFA. After many years living in various places around the U.S., he returned to Salt Lake City where he now teaches at his alma mater.

Meet the Moderator:

Peter Hay is a cultural programmer, curator, and artist living in Salt Lake City with his wife and daughter. He received an Associate of Arts from Northern Oklahoma College, a Bachelor of Arts from Northeastern State University, and a Master of Fine Arts from Louisiana Tech University. Peter is currently the visual arts manager of the Utah Division of Arts & Museums and co-founder/ co-director of PROArtes México. Previously, Hay was a grant consultant with ASU Art Museum, gallery manager of Modern West, exhibits director of Durango Arts Center, and director of development and public relations for Living Arts of Tulsa, to name a few.

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Relative Truths was curated by:

Peter Hay, Associate Director, PROArtes México.

In Partnership with: