Lizzie Windsor & Brenna Cooper & Jeremiah Parkin | Bianca Velasquez

Exhibitions open Jul 27 through Sep 4, 2026.

• Fri, Jul 31, 6–9 pm: Opening Reception
• Fri, Aug 21, 6–9 pm: Salt Lake Gallery Stroll

Brenna Cooper & Jeremiah Parkin & Lizzie Windsor: IRL

Exhibition Statement

IRL is a lens-based show featuring work from artists Brenna Cooper, Jeremiah Parkin, and Lizzie Windsor. In this show, we present works that marry image and object. Traditional photography privileges imagery alone, but these works emphasize photos as objects rather than photos as a window to another time, place, or reality. We each interpret the idea differently with distinctive imagery and material explorations, united by a shared interest in returning photographs to something you can actually feel.

We explore unremarkable subject matter as an attempt to help distance ourselves—and find some relief—from the overwhelming consumption of photography through the internet. While we create images through digital means, turning them into physical objects reconnects us with photography's material traditions—originally an extremely hands-on and process-heavy medium. By making images more tactile we want this exhibition to help reexamine our surroundings and interrogate the way we interact with photographic images.

Biographies

Brenna Cooper is a Utah-based artist working in photography, printmaking, and sculpture. She is originally from Leesburg, Virginia and moved to Utah in 2017. She received her BFA in Art at Brigham Young University and is an MFA candidate at the Ohio State University. Her work captures themes of the impartial nature of time, the reward of slow observation, and spaces that invite introspection. Her work has been exhibited in various locations in the US and primarily in Utah.

Jeremiah Parkin is a sculptor and photographer based in Provo, Utah. He graduated with a BFA in Art from Brigham Young University in 2025. His art is rooted in the physical and visual language of work, drawing from his personal experiences in landscaping and construction. In those settings his work references raw materials, in-process jobs, and tools. Parkin’s work explores human nature through engagement with physical labor.

Lizzie Windsor was born in 2000 in Concord, Massachusetts. She received a BFA from Brigham Young University in 2025. Windsor works in photography and textiles. Her interest in textiles is both physically present in her work and manifests in almost all of her photographs. Windsor’s current work is informed by her lived surroundings and her desire to uncover hidden systems within her immediate environment. She is currently based in Provo, Utah.

Bianca Velasquez

Exhibition: Prescribed Burn

Prescribed Burn emerged from my viewing of Fire Tender, a short documentary about the matriarchal Indigenous practice of cultural burning. While the film illuminated a relationship to land grounded in care, stewardship, and reciprocity, it also revealed a personal truth: growth often requires sacrifice. Just as intentional fire can prevent catastrophic wildfire and prepare the ground for renewal, we too must sometimes burn away our old patterns, fears, and attachments in order to make space for what comes next.

This beadwork and acrylic exhibition traces that cycle of destruction and regeneration. Through depictions of flowers that bloom in post-fire landscapes and abstract reflections on moments of rupture in my own life, the work considers what can emerge from loss. Fire becomes both wound and medicine, an agent of transformation that clears the way for new growth.

Prescribed Burn also seeks to create space for education and reflection on the history and ongoing significance of Indigenous cultural burning practices. Although the exhibition adopts the term "prescribed burn" (the language commonly used by state agencies for wildfire mitigation) it does so critically. The title is not an endorsement of the state's appropriation or institutionalization of a sacred cultural practice. Rather, the intention is to use the phrase as a metaphor for the medicinal and spiritual potential of intentional sacrifice. Here, the prescribed burn becomes a necessary offering to the future, and an act of faith in what might grow from the ashes.

Biography

Bianca Velasquez is a Salt Lake City–based beadwork and multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores identity, cultural heritage, memory, and personal transformation. Working across beadwork, acrylic painting, and mixed media, Velasquez creates richly textured works that tend to her internalized wounds involving family history, assimilation, and self-discovery. Her beadwork serves as a meditative process of reclaiming ancestral connections, using intricate patterns and labor-intensive techniques to examine both physical and emotional space.

A longtime contributor to Utah’s arts community, Velasquez has spent more than a decade as both an artist and arts writer, with work appearing in publications including Southwest Contemporary, Hyperallergic, and SLUG Magazine. Her artistic practice is informed by her experiences growing up between cultures and navigating the complexities of immigrant heritage within predominantly white communities. Through vibrant color, layered symbolism, and meticulous craftsmanship, Velasquez creates work that speaks on resilience, grief, and renewal.

In addition to her studio practice, Velasquez is an active arts advocate, curator, and community builder. Her work has been exhibited throughout Utah and featured in collaborative projects and exhibitions that center cultural identity, collective memory, and social connection. Through both her visual art and cultural work, she is dedicated to fostering dialogue, amplifying underrepresented voices, and creating spaces for reflection, healing, and community engagement.