Ron Linn & Jesse Meredith - Finch Lane Gallery Exhibition

The Finch Lane Gallery presents two new art exhibitions: gridding the west by Ron Linn and So That We May Fear Not by Jesse Meredith. Experienced together, Linn and Meredith’s exhibitions present observations on the contradictions and futility of historical white American settler culture and modern-day white militias. These exhibitions are open to the public from March 11 – April 22, 2022, at 54 Finch Lane. Finch Lane Gallery is open on Tuesdays from 9:30am-8:30pm and Wednesdays & Thursdays from 9:30am-5pm. There will be an artist reception on Friday, March 18, 6-9pm, open to the public.

Ron Linn – gridding the west

gridding the west interrogates the myths created by Mormon pioneers. These settlers viewed the west as an “empty” landscape to be owned and contained. They laid the gridded plat, for them a marker of heavenly order, over the landscape. Linn speaks to the futility of attempting to contain something which cannot be contained through painted landscapes overlaid with various grids and imagery alluding to manifest destiny with a nod to the underlying violent history in claiming the west.

Ron Linn’s work has shown at Carnation Contemporary, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, the Rio and Alice Galleries in Salt Lake City, Bountiful Davis Art Center, and PDX Contemporary Art. He currently teaches Studio Art courses at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he lives and works. ronlinnportfolio.com

Jesse Meredith – So That We May Fear Not

So That We May Fear Not investigates nuances and contradictions of self-styled patriot ideologies, grounded in the whitewashed narrative of American history textbooks. Meredith leveraged his identity to join a midwestern militia to examine and understand the movement that spearheaded a dramatic political shift in the United States. Through photographs punctured with holes and militia props overlaid with text speaking to the permeability and fragility of white nationalism Meredith asks why this culture exists and how we might re-weave a softer, more collaborative future.

Jesse Meredith’s work has been exhibited in Chicago, New York, Peoria, Philadelphia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Limassol (Cyprus), and Buenos Aires (Argentina), among other virtual and physical spaces. He is a Lecturer in photography at the School of the Art Institute and a freelance photographer. He is currently an artist in residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.

The Finch Lane Gallery is a program of the Salt Lake City Arts Council.- For more information on the Finch Lane Gallery, contact Claire Taylor, Visual Arts Coordinator, at Claire.Taylor@slcgov.com or visit saltlakearts.org/finchlanegallery/