USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum News Release
Price, UTAH– The Prehistoric Museum at Utah State University Eastern is proud to announce Mutualism, by artist Anna Evans, her first solo exhibition with the museum. For this new collection, Evans has created 14 large abstract fiber and mixed media sculptures inspired by mutually beneficial relationships between organisms in the natural environment of the Colorado Plateau Desert.
Anna Evans’ work embraces myriad mediums and disciplines in fiber and craft, each requiring years of careful mastery. She employs a regenerative art practice with strict material sourcing, including organically grown dye plants, fiber from small regional farms, and second-hand fabric. Dedicated to sustainable and traditional hand process, her work is imbued with a deep and tactile intimacy. Each piece she creates is the product of a slow, organic aggregation, every gesture in concert with the ancient meter of Earth’s long song. The resulting pieces evoke the matchless geometries of the American West found in desert landscapes exposed though aggressive erosion and traditional quilt blocks passed down from generations of women in her family. Evans’ work constitutes a perpetual blossoming of meticulous process in vivid color and rich textural presence.
With Mutualism, Evans creates a fantastical menagerie of dreamscape flora and fauna, exploring the delicate and enigmatic ways in which organisms have adapted to help each other succeed. The works in Mutualism are whimsical and surreal interpretations of the organisms and elements they represent, a formalistic meditation on the colors, patterns, and rhythms of the natural world that inspire and, quite literally, constitute her pieces. “My work is a collaboration with my community and habitat, fostering relationships with farmers for fiber and manure, fabric which has passed through neighbors’ homes and lives, and plants that depend on me to nourish and tend them.” The resulting collection expresses the desert’s bizarre singularity as a new and bold sculpture garden of weird and wonderful forms.
Born and raised in Western Colorado, Evans now lives and works in Eastern Utah. She is descended from a long line of farmers and was raised with a wealth of generational knowledge in quilting and fiber arts. This confluence of backgrounds in both agriculture and traditional craft uniquely informs her practice today with a deep understanding of where her materials come from. By expanding the limits of traditional fiber skills developed from childhood, Evans brings her craft into a contemporary form and setting. In 2022, Evans was selected for the Utah Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts. She maintains a studio practice in a historic log cabin on her micro-farm where she grows dye plants, a vegetable garden, and native pollinator habitat.
The opening reception for Mutualism will take place in the Special Exhibits Gallery of The Prehistoric Museum on Saturday, April 12, 2025, from 6-8 pm. Located in Price, Utah at 155 E Main Street, The Prehistoric Museum invites the public to explore this unique exhibition, on view through October 2025.