Susan Kirby | Hannah Vaughn

Exhibitions open Apr 17 through May 29, 2026.

• Fri, Apr 17, 6-9pm: Opening Reception & Salt Lake Gallery Stroll
• Fri, May 15, 6-9pm: Salt Lake Gallery Stroll

Susan Kirby

Exhibition
My exhibition is a combination of paintings done in Salt Lake City and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where I lived for ten years. The paintings are mostly about things I love: the spaces I lived in with my two cats from Mexico, Brigit and Frida; the festivities and architecture of San Miguel de Allende; cactus gardens and jacaranda trees where we lived. After my heart surgery in Mexico, I put an anatomical study of my heart in various paintings. They are autobiographical — my cats, my clothes, my hobbies: tango, hiking. Coming back to Salt Lake City, which is my home, I have paid attention to my ancestry, Great Salt Lake, and features of Southern Utah. I am fascinated by Land Artists and have included Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, both works in Utah. My Last Suppers and party paintings have iconic people — artists, world leaders, activists, musicians, ancestors — in them. I like to juxtapose people crisscrossing time constraints. My perspective encompasses various realities.

Biography
Susan Jacobsen Kirby was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 11, 1953. Her parents Ruth and Gordon were instrumental in her development as an artist. They had many close artist friends, most notably Don Olsen and Lee Deffebach.

When Susan was eight her family moved to Boise, Idaho for a year. Then they drove a Volkswagen bus to Greenwich, Connecticut with three cats and one dog. They lived there for two years. Susan and her sisters attended Whitby Montessori School. She learned to ride horses in the English style, jumping the horses over stone walls in the woods. The family then took the transatlantic liner La France to France for a year. They lived in a small village on Lac d'Annecy in the Haute Savoie region. Susan and her sisters attended the public school there and learned to speak and write French in a short time.

When she returned to Salt Lake City in the eighth grade she went to Bonneville Jr. and on to Olympus High School, graduating in 1972. She ski raced during this time and later took up backcountry skiing on three-pin skis. After finishing high school, she returned to France and in Paris studied French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu for a year. She went on to study sewing and design for another year at La Chambre Syndicale de La Couture Parisienne. Her teacher said she was the 'artist' of the class. She had dreams of being a dress designer at that point.

When she returned to the USA she moved to Kentfield, California in Marin County and worked at Williams Sonoma in San Francisco. During the following years she spent time traveling to Mexico and Central America. She loved hiking and camping. She moved to New York City for six months during this period and worked for fashion photographers. Her sister Jane was living there and was very helpful. She returned to Salt Lake City after and enrolled in the nursing program at Salt Lake Community College. She attained a Licensed Practical Nurse degree. It was during this period she decided to become an artist. She rented an apartment at the Woodruff Apartments and painted there for ten years. She widely exhibited her work and obtained many commissions. In 1992 she was given a one-woman show at the Salt Lake Art Center (now UMOCA). She studied martial arts for twelve years during this time, obtained a black belt in Shorin Ryu karate, and taught Tai Chi Chuan. To relax she would go on river trips with friends in the Utah deserts.

Her cousin Alan Jacobsen, to whom she was very close, urged her to come visit him in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She lived there for ten years. In 2016 she bought a house in Los Frailes, a neighborhood in San Miguel. She painted, studied Spanish and danced tango. In 2019 she had open heart surgery at Hospital Mac, a brand-new hospital, becoming their first open heart surgery patient. She moved back to Salt Lake City with her two Mexican cats, Brigitte and Frida, in January 2022.

Hannah Vaughn: Reliquaries of Absence

Exhibition
The reliquaries are empty, save our own projections into their empty shells, and perhaps a small pile of silken viscera left behind. Resembling spine, ribcage, ship, kite, vessel. Precariously tethered structures suspended, on the edge of departure, aloft on a breath of grief. Crafted of wood, textile, porcelain, salt, etc. — materials that ring of home and form small spaces in which you imagine your former self, or perhaps your mother.

Biography
Hannah Vaughn is an architect, educator and artist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is the co-founder of VY Architecture, with offices in Utah and Idaho, and teaches design studio at the University of Utah School of Architecture as adjunct faculty. Hannah’s work is centered around the primacy of making, craft as an expression of the value of things, and the technical aspect of constructing. The connection to material and place is an integral part of her practice and teaching — creating work that frames human experience through fundamental human perceptions.