Baggage: Alex Caldiero in Retrospect @ UMOCA
Alex Caldiero ranks among Utah's most distinctive creative minds, with a career spanning 50 years as a writer, performer and multidisciplinary innovator—just don't call him an "artist." Caldiero prefers the term "maker," and a new exhibition at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (50 S. West Temple, utahmoca.org) explores the many things and ideas he has made.
Baggage: Alex Caldiero in Retrospect—currently running—digs through Caldiero's archives for a showcase of notebooks, drawings, sculptures, recordings of his live performances and more. The curators state that the exhibition was put together without an attempt to define chronology or any specific progression in Caldiero's career, using custom-made shelves and pedestals similar to those from Caldiero's own studio as a way to convey the range and scope of his work. In an opening event with the curators, Caldiero described the rush he felt from looking at items as they were unpacked: "I hadn't seen some of them in 30 years ... There was an energy, a rush."