Our lives are filled with stories, positive and negative, humorous and heartbreaking. They live on in our memories, informing our daily routines and relationships, resurfacing from time to time as guides for what to do next—or what not to do. This exhibition focuses on what mothers teach us, both individually and collectively.

In Pam Bowman’s installation, six story fragments from her life resonate universally as she addresses the formative issues of character development, individual purpose, and body image, as taught by her mother. These retellings in such items as trophies, resin grapes, and diet books explore how our experiences simultaneously shape us and teach us to shape ourselves. 

Jacqui Larsen’s paintings take a metaphoric look at the impossible charge of any guardian to stand as lookout for a child. Their task is to ferret out the danger and forge a path ahead, all while dispensing crucial advice: “Look both ways,” “Soap is cheap,” and “Never say never.”  

Upcoming Programming:

Kimball Art Center is excited to be partnering with The Bee, Salt Lake City’s beloved monthly gathering of brave storytellers and attentive listeners, to host a storytelling workshop drawing on the themes of our exhibition of Things My Mother Taught Me. Learn more about this event here.

Join us as we discuss When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams. Uniting art and literature, let’s come together for an engaging conversation that will expand our experience of the book as well and how it relates to this exhibition. Learn more here.

Parker is an outdoor-focused illustrator and graphic designer, primarily based out of Park City, Utah. Initially trained as a landscape architect, his design style can be traced back to thousands of hours spent at the drafting table. Regularly drawing en plein air, his pieces are inspired by the landscapes, city scenes, and big rocks he’s come across while traveling. Through his sketchbooks, paintings, and hand-drawn collages he seeks to capture the subtly interconnected elements that create a sense of place.
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Parker es un ilustrador y diseñador gráfico enfocado en el exterior, principalmente con base en Park City, Utah. Inicialmente entrenado como arquitecto paisajista, su estilo de diseño puede remontarse a miles de horas en la mesa de dibujo. Dibujando regularmente al aire libre, sus piezas están inspiradas por paisajes, escenas de la ciudad y grandes rocas con las cuales se ha topado al viajar. A través de sus cuadernos de dibujo, pinturas y collages dibujados a mano, busca capturar los elementos sutilmente interconectados que crean un sentido de lugar.

The month I was born, the first Nimbus satellite was launched, taking images of polar ice as it began its work. From that September in 1964 to September 2012, the ice coverage in the arctic has fallen by half. And the ice is thinner.

Ice sheets are expanses of glacier ice covering surfaces of land and free water greater than 50,000 square kilometers. The only ice sheets now on earth are in Greenland and Antarctica. Antarctica loses a hundred cubic kilometers of ice each year. New icebergs are born of melting glaciers, breaking free into the open ocean. Sea levels rise.

Ice is a time capsule, storing bits of creatures, traces of gasses and waters from prior earths. Some of it dead, some of it not quite. In the year that I was born, scientists began tracking the long-term ice record of the Arctic lake Kilpisjärvi at the northwestern tip of Finland, not far from the point where the borders of Sweden, Norway, and Finland meet. Typically frozen for eight months of the year, Lake Kilpisjärvi has frozen an average of 2.3 days later each decade since 1964, and in each of those decades, the lake has seen a decrease of an average of 3.4 days of total ice cover.

As the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere rises, ancient ice is melting, freeing living cells of million-year-old bacteria once contained in the safety of the freeze, and occasionally coughing up a frozen mammoth.

Albedo, Latin for “whiteness”, is a measure of the reflectivity of a surface. For a planet, it is the amount of solar radiation (including light) that is reflected back into space. For millions of years, including the entire period of human evolution, earth’s albedo has hovered around 0.39, the result of the reflective balance of forests, open lands, seawater, and ice. As we lose ice from the earth’s surface, we reflect less light back into space. We become dimmer. We absorb heat, as ice dies into water.

Paul Crow

In striking and poignant images, Sue Flood takes us to Earth’s coldest places. Flood has made numerous journeys to Antarctica and the Arctic, yet her sense of awe in these remote lands never fades. From the boundless charm of penguins to the grandeur of vast ice shelves, she captures moments of intense drama and epic beauty.

Her work also carries an important message: The relationship between this wilderness and its inhabitants is precarious. Many will never travel to the polar regions, but through her work, Flood inspires us with a desire to respect and protect these lands and, above all, to engage with the natural world that surrounds us.

Cold Places includes more than 45 photographs as well as an interactive activity designed to bring Flood’s global message to a local scale.

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Con imágenes impactantes y conmovedoras, Sue Flood nos trasladese a los lugares más fríos de la Tierra. Flood ha hecho numerosos viajes a la Antártida y al Ártico, pero su sentido de asombro en estas tierras remotas nunca se desvanece. Desde el encanto ilimitado de los pingüinos, hasta la grandeza de vastas mesetas de hielo, ella captura momentos de intensa drama y belleza épica.

Su trabajo también lleva un mensaje importante: la relación entre esta tierra remotamente salvaje y sus habitantes es precaria. Muchos nunca viajarán a las regiones polares, pero a través de su trabajo, Flood nos inspira con el deseo de respetar y proteger estos terrenos y, sobre todo, participar y comprometerse en el mundo natural que nos rodea.

Exhibition Programming:

Art Talk with Sue Flood | February 24 | 4pm | Free

Community Reception | February 24 | 5:30pm – 7pm | Free

Photography Critique Session with Sue Flood | February 25 | 10am – 12 pm |
A limited number of critiques are available for $20 per person. Free admission for those not
participating in a critique.

Arctic Artful Afternoon | Art class for kids | March 1 | 1pm – 4 pm | $25

Climate Change: A Panel Discussion | March 13 | 7pm | Free

Read and Re(View) – Kimball’s New Book Club | Arctic Dreams | March 28 | 7pm | Free