An Artist Among Us: The Art + Paintings of Camille Erickson

Without doubt, the Sparano + Mooney Architecture team are talented, driven, and creative. We work hard to deliver thoughtful design solutions to our clients, not to mention our commitment to an exceptional client experience and harnessing first-rate business acumen. Of course, our Salt Lake City and Los Angeles architects are highly skilled at turning numerous iterations of ideas and sketches into renders and plans. Putting pen, pencil and brush to paper is a key aspect of our practice and drawing skills are essential to the profession. But did you know that our team member Camille Erickson, head of Accounting and Human Resources, also produces beautiful paintings and is an enormously talented artist in her own right? We are astounded by Camille’s talent, and her ability to use both her left and right brain with equal flourish. We interviewed her to discover more about her work.

12th Annual Mountain West Arts Conference

The 12th Annual Mountain West Arts Conference is happening this week at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley City, Utah. It will be a day filled with performances, design exhibits, workshops, speakers and networking. Kevin Kling will be the keynote speaker addressing his audience on The Healing Power of Story.

We're proud sponsors of this event and are so happy to see members of Utah and the Mountain West's creative community coming together to form connections and help sustain the arts!

Let There Be Light: The Art of James Turrell

“My art is about your seeing,” states the enigmatic artist James Turrell (b. 1943). Although one could argue that most art is intrinsically about the experience of the viewer “seeing” it, this is not art as we know it – art that asserts itself as a singular entity on a wall or polished concrete floor. Rather, Turrell’s art is pure, otherworldly, and intended to affect profoundly the viewer’s experience and perception when encountering the works crafted solely with light as the medium; light, not as a medium for looking at other things, but as “an architecture of space created with light”. As architects working in the American West, an area that possesses a unique quality of light, we are fascinated with Turrell and his tireless obsession with the effect that light, both celestial and manufactured, has on an occupant in a space.

Searching for Beauty, Meaning and Truth in Architecture and Museums

It should be no secret that, as architects specializing in arts and culture projects in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and the American West, we adore museums. Their hallowed galleries contain priceless paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings and objets d’art, but they also possess the residual stories of the artists themselves, countless visitors who pass through, talented curators who bring the exhibits to life, and architects who have helped realize those storied spaces. It is a pleasure and a privilege to roam the creative displays and learn from some of the most influential museum designs in the world, just as Anne Mooney and John Sparano did recently on their European tour of London and Paris where they visited Sir John Soane’s Museum and the Tate Modern in London and the Louvre, Picasso Museum and the Rodin Museum in Paris. The inspiration drawn from these stalwart institutions absolutely helps inform our own design process, and we are excited to incorporate new ideas into our own museum projects, such as the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) at Utah State University.

An Artist among Us: The Sketches of Jorge Beltran

There’s no doubt about it – the Sparano + Mooney Architecture team are a talented bunch. We work hard to deliver thoughtful, innovative and contemporary design solutions; every day striving to produce beautiful architecture for our amazing clients. The interpretation of an idea from start to finish often involves numerous iterations of sketches, renders and plans. Putting pen, pencil and brush to paper is a key aspect of our practice and drawing skills are essential to the profession. But did you know that our team member Jorge Beltran, who recently celebrated eleven years with the firm, also produces phenomenal sketches at work and in his free time and is a supremely talented artist in his own right? We are blown away by Jorge’s talent, and interviewed him to discover more about his work.

SPARANO + MOONEY ARCHITECTURE