‘Two prospectors casually discover a rich ore body, a bankrupt financier promotes the venture, the boomtown of Frisco becomes one of the wildest mining camps in the West with a murder or two every evening, a tough lawman who shoots on sight begins to clean up the town, after producing millions the huge mine collapses, and Frisco becomes another ghost town.’

Nearly 125 years after a mine collapse essentially sealed Frisco’s inevitable doom, Utah filmmakers Torben Bernhard and Travis Low scouting the Beaver County area some 15 miles west of Milford completely missed the town’s location on their first pass. As Bernhard recalls, ‘the former boomtown was once home to thousands of people, but is now mostly sagebrush, building foundations, old mining equipment, and scraps of metal. The old charcoal kilns are listed on the National Register of Historic Places [as of 1982] but they are beginning to fall apart as well.’

In their short film ‘Boomtown,’ which premieres next month at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, Bernhard and Low reconstruct Frisco for a contemporary audience through excerpts from rare recordings of oral histories taken from individuals who had lived in a town that disappeared from the map by the end of the 1920s.

As much as this 12-minute film, which also was produced by Bernhard’s wife Marissa, reflects countless hours of historical and scholarly research, the visual imagery and tape excerpts in ‘Boomtown’ underscore the primal challenge we all face in the lifelong predicament of preserving identity. Like the other four films in their forthcoming Lost and Found Series, ‘Boomtown’ suggests, ‘nobody or very few people know our history but this will change.’

‘Boomtown’ reminds us of how easily we overlook the urban dimension that shaped the history of the American West as deeply as its rural and agricultural character. Frisco literally sprouted overnight in the 1870s after prospectors from a galena mine discovered a promising outcrop that showed high silver content. It took five years to extend the rail lines, which in Frisco’s earliest days were still at least 175 miles away, but by 1880, the town became a major center of industry and commerce.

Frisco, as viewers discover in the film, also was plagued by familiar big-city problems of today: murders, bar brawls, gambling, and prostitution, to name a few. There are stories about a man, accused of killing his wife, who ‘ran makeshift whiskey distilleries illegally,’ a woman who recalls growing up in a town that easily referenced Sodom and Gomorrah, and, most vividly, a sheriff who wasted no time in dispensing quick-trigger justice by way of his belief that ‘the dead man gives no trouble.’

The tapes were a serendipitous find for the trio of filmmakers. Looking for descendants of former Frisco residents, they found Dick Davis who had tapes apparently recorded nearly 50 years ago not long before the last generation of Frisco citizens died out. ‘Our jaws dropped,’ Bernhard explains. ‘Instead of scholars or family members talking about Frisco, it was the people who actually lived there. He couldn’t remember how he came by the tape, but knew that one of the interviewees was a family member of his.’

There is a haunting literary eloquence in ‘Boomtown,’ with these voices overlaying present-day images of Frisco that show remnants of the once-vibrant mining town and glimpses of tombstones including one with the simplest ironical epithet ‘Gone but not forgotten.’ The film’s soundscape is an Expressionistic masterpiece with the motivic unity of ghost town ambient sounds, original musical phrases, and the taped excerpts.

The film’s music comes from Earth’s 2005 album ‘Hex: Or Printing in The Infernal Method,’ which was released by Southern Lord Records. Indeed, it is a perfect symbiotic partner in the film’s overall effect. As band member Dylan Carlson explained on the band’s Web site, ‘I was heavily influenced by [Cormac McCarthy's] book “Blood Meridian; or the Evening Redness In the West,” a book that explores the real western expansion and real clash of people on this newest continent. It has been a continent that from the beginning has been alien and hostile yet posessing a bewitching beauty.’ That motif certainly echoes throughout ‘Boomtown.’

The West is filled with ghost towns. Utah has hundreds. An estimated 1,600 have been documented in Nevada. Yet, they remain strangely absent in the ongoing exercise about how we construct our local histories. Clint Thomsen, an award-winning freelance journalist who has spent much time visiting Utah’s former towns, has suggested that we should think about Frisco and others more than as curious footnotes to the state’s history:

‘Next time you see a pile of wooden planks where a house once stood, consider that every board was cut or imported by the industrious people who built these towns from scratch. Children were born there. People worked and spent their lives there. They died there and their bones still lie there under the dirt. The beauty of a ghost town lies not just in what buildings remain, but in the history that saturates its half-standing walls and scattered bricks.’

Indeed, ‘Boomtown’ asks its viewers to take up the question: What happens when all of our dreams end up in a figurative cemetery? And, why, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable catastrophe, some of us are able to persevere and continue the crazy dreamlike ideal of our original dreams even as the physical results of our efforts lay in ruins.

Furthermore, we must be consistently mindful of how these memories can be erased so easily and lost forever. Otherwise, our reconstructed histories end up being neatly patterned comfortable artifices that eschew the more valuable elements of critical thinking and the atheistic notion that history is governed more by chaos, unanticipated events, and anarchic upheavals than by a framework of analytical and theoretical codes.

‘Boomtown,’ which is among the half dozen films selected to compete in the Big Sky Award category, is the second Lost and Found Series entry to be accepted into Big Sky, a documentary film festival that is in its ninth year. The festival slate comprises 144 films selected from more than 1,000 entries. Big Sky runs February 17-26.

In ‘Tarkio Balloon,’ which played at last year’s festival, Bernhard goes back to a cemetery in a small Missouri town where his brother, Dane, is buried. In 1985, when Bernhard was 2, his two-month-old brother died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Shot on 8-MM film and incorporating excerpts from an audio interview recorded years earlier with his mother (Janae), ‘Tarkio Balloon’ gives visibility to all parents who lost a child.

The entire series is expected to be completed by spring with the five films running under 15 minutes each and representing different angles and settings (Utah, Missouri, and Thailand).

‘Trash Collector’ explores the life of Chaan, a man living in a slum along the train tracks that snake through Nakhorn Ratchasima (Korat) en route to the northeast region of Thailand. Bernhard’s wife Marissa is directing ‘Thailand Cowboy,’ a fascinating look into a Thai man who lives to fuel his passion for American westerns and the romanticized personalities of that genre including John Wayne and John Ford.

The fifth film – ‘The Gospel According to Ralphael’ – is about a Salt Lake City man who has transformed a shabby warehouse into a museum of enormous concrete and steel sculptures, paintings, murals, and ceiling frescoes that synthesize his religious beliefs taken from traditional and personal interpretations of many theological foundations.

For more information about the festival, see here. For information about The Lost and Found Series, see here.

However, the Swiss-born artist should not be underestimated because of her easy propensity for whimsy touches and occasional silliness. Her work, rich in vibrant and lush colors, resists the anti-chromatic impulses of several major postwar European art movements. Yet, it also resists the tendency of absolutism readily adopted by the ultra-serious individual artist who sees himself (or herself) as the rigid authority of aethesticisim.

In the latest installment of the Creativity in Focus series, sponsored by the Utah Film Center and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA), ‘The Color of Your Socks: A Year with Pipilotti Rist,’ directed by Michael Hegglin, is a thoroughly entertaining crisply-paced romp showing the artist’s preparation for a major installation at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.

The film will be screened in a free, public program Friday, Jan. 13, at 7 p.m. at the UMOCA’s auditorium.

The 52-minute documentary follows the preparations for ‘Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)’ which opened in November of 2008 at MOMA. Viewers catch the significance of the film’s title at the 48-minute mark when MOMA’s security guards ask the artist how they should handle any visitors who resist the polite instructions to remove their shoes so they can enter on the white-carpet section of the installation. In her characteristic good-natured tone, Rist says they should say something like being curious about the ‘color of your socks.’

The documentary underscores Rist’s capacity for the type of engagement that resounds consistently throughout her work. She eagerly invites the cameras to chronicle the problem-solving details that go into her widely praised video installations. There are a few moments, too, where viewers see how the artist works around the various limitations and logistical issues posed by the host museum.

The MOMA video exhibit, which took the museum’s conservation department 93 hours to copy, included a 16-minute video loop with images rising 25 feet and a carpeted sculpture in the form of a sitting island. However, viewers familiar with Rist’s work go well beyond the most obvious signs of pleasure and whimsical décor to see how the artist cleverly transforms the museum’s space where spectators literally can pour their body out in how they see the exhibit not only within their own intimate boundaries but also in the way they potentially interact with others. As Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine’s senior art critic, wrote at the time of the exhibit:

‘Shoes and coats are everywhere. People lie around, lean on walls, sleep and sprawl in groups on the floor and couch. On one of my visits, the well-known painter Gary Stephan drifted by and said, “I wish I had some ganja.” This is museum as hallucination, opium den, Lotus Land, cubbyhole and pleasure dome. Call it Trance Central station.’

Perhaps the most meaningful take-away from Rist’s work is that artists – and literally each of us – should never hesitate to liberate ourselves from unnecessary fears, even if the results turn out to be a mixed bag of successes and failures. That theme is most prominent in ‘Pepperminta,’ Rist’s first full-length feature film about a young woman, played by the same actress who appears in the video installation portrayed in the documentary.

The film follows Pepperminta, bedecked in a motley-colored drum major’s uniform, who gathers up a colorful troupe of apostles as they mischievously upend the gray, grim sensibilities of authority figures in a European city. Unashamedly silly, the film nevertheless reinforces precisely the artistic statement that is so evident in ‘The Color of Your Socks’ documentary.

For more information, see here and here.

There’s a wholesome earthiness about the New Year’s food traditions in virtually every culture. A particular personal favorite is lentils, of which there are many recipes The Selective Echo has tried. However, I am immediately drawn to a family recipe provided by Utah’s most famous salami and charcuterie master Cristiano Creminelli.

The lentil recipe with the Italian staple cotechino, which Creminelli has offered as part of this year’s holiday season, is fragrant, satisfying, and a perfect party side dish. The recipe, which can be found here, incorporates the cotechino sausage, which is simply a cooked form of salami, and, like all of Creminell products, is handmade.

Creminelli puts his own distinctive imprint upon the cotechino, which typically is stuffed into the deboned front leg of a pig. Creminelli’s cotechino, which has a distinctive porky flavor nuanced with garlic and cloves, is stuffed into a beef casing. It’s easy to use the cotechino in Creminell’s recipe. All one has to do is boil the sausage in its plastic pouch for 20 minutes. Afterward, remove the plastic, the string and casing; score and slice the sausage, and arrange it on the lentils.

Another great favorite this holiday season is his wild boar mortadella, which has a prominent silky texture and an incredibly smooth finish on taste. Of course, the mortadella sliced paper thin, makes for a perfect sandwich but it also is an ideal addition to an antipasto tray when it’s cubed.

Not a bad way to start the year.

Look no further than the impressively diverse chocolate collection at Tony Caputo’s Market and Deli for the definitive example of an Occupy Chocolate movement.

Here, words and phrases such as “fair trade,” “rainforest alliance,” “organic,” “certified,” and “single estate” lose their overblown and over-promoted promise of value. From tasting the bars of already well-known producers such as Amedei, Amano, and Pralus to the newest players such as Potomac Chocolate and The Chocolate Conspiracy, customers also get a transparent glimpse of what genuine ethical models of trade should really look like. These companies work with buyers who don’t force economically disadvantaged farmers to cut corners in their work – even in how they would ferment and dry the cacao beans.

For example, Alessio and Cecilia Tessieri, the siblings who started Amedei in 1990, pay farmers at least six times the prevailing market rates and make it a point to connect personally regularly with the growers. In the eyes of the connoisseur, chocolate making now appears less like an industry than as a laboratory where culinary risks, experimentation and hard work lead to a transcendental experience.

Through sample tastings, chocolate education classes, and their store purchases, customers begin to understand the need to preserve high-quality crops of cacao beans and to support farmers who should be rewarded for producing a crop that offers exceptional flavor profiles cultivated in the best sustainable agricultural environment possible.

For Ben Rasmussen, the epiphany changed his life. Two years ago, at Christmas, Rasmussen, who always had been content with a Three Musketeers bar to satisfy his chocolate craving, sampled chocolates that his brother purchased after he attended a class at Caputo’s. Rasmussen, a BYU-Idaho graduate who was living in Virginia and working as a computer systems administrator, was so impressed that he encouraged his brother to repeat the sample tastings for other holiday visitors.

‘I had a pretty terrible palate and I never considered myself a lover of dark chocolate,’ he recalls. ‘I certainly wasn’t a foodie in the traditional sense and I even warned my brother not to get his hopes up with me. However, after tasting the gateway drugs – a Valrhona Manjari, Amedei Chuao, Amano Ocumare, and Domori Java Blond – I fell in love immediately.’

By the Fourth of July in 2010, Rasmussen had tempered his first batch of chocolate with beans from the Ivory Coast and he was so hooked that he shuttered his sideline business as a wedding photographer and launched Potomac Chocolate. With a voracious appetite for continuous improvement, he quickly accelerated his learning curve, gaining the attention of the Biagio Fine Chocolate shop in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Potomac Chocolate debuted late last year at a chocolate symposium at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

‘Nobody knew we were in the room and the moderator milked the room for comments, which were quite positive,’ he says. ‘There was a woman sitting two rows in front of me who spat out the sample and she was mortified when we were introduced.’ Ironically, Rasmussen has yet to meet Matt Caputo in person.

This Christmas, Rasmussen’s Upala bar with nibs, made from beans in Costa Rica that have not been featured extensively in other bean-to-bar productions, is available at Caputo’s and Potomac Chocolate can be found in at least two dozen other shops including Calgary and London. The bar explodes with promise and it is hard to believe that someone within such a short timespan has been able to achieve such a remarkable product.

The roast is unquestionably rich and deep but Rasmussen shows a deft hand with bringing out lightened, smoothed tones of molasses, berries, and spice. It is a bold bar not necessarily the most complex or refined but it is a memorably satisfying example of chocolate’s elemental perfection.

Boldness is a common trait among many of the products found at Caputo’s. In Utah, The Chocolate Conspiracy is angling to promote chocolate’s full health benefits by offering raw chocolate bars, made from heirloom Nacional beans from Ecuador. A. J. Wentworth, whose culinary background is focused on raw, vegan, and integrative nutritional techniques, then processes the chocolate through 70 hours of grinding and sweetens it with raw, unfiltered honey from a local producer. Other ingredients might include Himalayan pink salt and raw vanilla bean.

Wentworth, who also has a patisserie background, has produced a line of bars that will surprise even detractors who have found other raw bars to be shallow and plastic in taste. His Goji Berry offering, in particular, is a first-rate infused bar that satisfies quite significantly with complex layers of texture and depth which normally would be apparent in bean-to-bar products with the sort of lighter roasts common in many Amano and Pralus chocolates. Part of his inspiration came from the challenges of making vegan chocolate desserts for customers and others, such as ‘my mother who always had been content with Hershey’s kisses,’ he explains.

Likewise, imaginative creations from other relative newcomers amplify the elemental flavors and healthful benefits of top-quality cacao beans. Missouri Chocolatier Alan ‘Patric’ McClure – whose seven years in business makes him a veteran relative to Rasmussen and Wentworth – achieves amazing results in bars such as his PBJ OMG (“peanut better and jelly” as part of the “oh my gosh” line). Using only five ingredients – roasted cacao beans, cocoa butter, cane sugar, sea salt, and peanut butter, McClure, whose other creations have won industry awards and accolades from observers such as Food & Wine Magazine, lets the fruit jelly notes come through the beans.

McClure pushes the boundaries in unprecedented ways, too, such as his collaboration with Kaldi’s Coffee Roasting Company. Earlier this month, Patric Chocolate released coffee-based Cappuccino and Mocha bars that use an espresso bean as the base ingredient. The taste surprises – in a pleasing way, too.

At Caputo’s, names like Amedei, Amano, Pralus and others continue to anchor one of the region’s most extensive retail offerings of fine chocolate. Amedei always flexes its culinary muscle in many enriching ways. Its Toscano Red bar packs a generous portion of dried fruits – cherries, strawberries and raspberries – into its 70 percent dark chocolate form.

The Amedei 9 bar, which now has earned two major awards from the Academy of Chocolate in London, is a 75 percent creation with beans coming from nine plantations. It runs the gamut in tasting – floral, light, and fruit-scented to rich, darker tones. The finish is so clean that one almost has to do a double-take to make sure that this bar actually contains 75 percent cocoa solids.

Amedei also has moved some of its chocolate creations that used to be available in the small five-gram sample squares into its traditional 50-gram (1.75 ounce) bars. Its Venezuela bar gives generous tasting notes of floral and citrus character along with hints of coffee, cream, and subtle fleeting bits of nutmeg, cinnamon, and other dark spices.

The artisan chocolate world has changed and expanded so much in less than a decade that a few roguish upstarts look upon Amedei as playing it too conservatively or cleanly but no one should ever underestimate this pioneer because they always prove their merit as independent producers who willingly take the risks big chocolate producers would never entertain.

Only Amedei would dare blend white chocolate with the strongly flavored pistachios unique to the tiny Bronte area in Sicily. The nuts, normally used in pastas, ice cream, and baklava, mesh so well with white chocolate that this Amedei creation is undeniably one of the best infused white chocolate bars ever tasted personally.

In many respects, the Utah-based Amano Artisan Chocolate enterprise has become almost as well known and respected in the global chocolate connoisseur community. Its Madagascar bar received the second highest ranked score of any bar tasted by expert connoisseurs who write reviews for the industry’s authoritative online information source Seventy%. It has earned scores of honors in less than five years.

Two Amano bars worth mentioning include Amano Cuyagua, which offers notes of rum, sassafras, coffee, and even earthy morels but has an intriguing finish on the palate that is like the end of a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner.

Special note should be given to its Morobe bar, which indicates precisely the type of rehabilitated cacao production by which farmers in Papua New Guinea. The bar epitomizes what Martin Christy, the internationally respected chocolate reviewer for Seventy% in London, believes is at the core of artisanal producers who seek to bring back the most cherished varietals of cacao – most specifically, Trinitario in this case. He rhapsodizes about Art Pollard’s creation:

‘As you let it melt in your mouth you will have those sharp grapefruit and lime flavours lifting off the bar, hitting the side of your mouth. It’s almost like a grapefruit vinaigrette with the acidity and the sweetness combined. But beneath that there is an utterly splendid caramel experience that holds it all together and well after the final melt you should get leather and a slight dusting of tobacco.’

Finally, Pralus offerings, as usual, should be checked out by customers at Caputo’s, too. Chocolate maker Francois Pralus, who worked as a pastry chef in France before turning his attention to chocolate, has produced bars that rank clearly among Amedei’s best efforts, matching them in terms of immensely pleasing silky tastes and creamy smooth textures.

He is as adventuresome as his Italian counterparts, producing, for example, a Vanuatu bar that contains cacao sourced from Epi, a tiny island part of the nation – really, a South Pacific archipelago with considerable volcanic activity nearly equidistant from Australia, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.

The taste is a fascinating mélange that belies the expectations one expects from the geographical origin of the bean. Fruity and zesty, the bar has fleeting notes of ginger, warm spices, and nuts that seem more appropriate for a late autumn feast.

Another worthwhile Pralus confection is the Barre Infernale that tips its culinary hand to the creator’s patisserie expertise. This is the perfect praline treat.

Quantity should never be the guide here. Most of these artisanal bars include 12 squares and just 2 or 3 at a time impart such incredible taste sensations that the satisfaction is so complete. Therefore, one would hesitate to risk sensory fatigue for fear of missing the complex notes these chocolate treasures offer. And, skip trying to pair them with wine. These confections seem to match beautifully with warmer liqueurs, rums, whiskeys, and scotch.

For more information about Caputo’s offerings of chocolates as well as classes, see here.

Ingenuity never is scarce when it comes to the final student projects at the Book Arts Studio at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library. For example, ‘Hubbub,’ was an imaginative collaboration of two sisters – Amber and Hayley Heaton – who produced a book of poems that replace simplistic, unrealistic abecedarian sentences (e.g., ‘A’ is for ‘apple) with emotionally engaging representations (e.g., ‘B’ is for ‘bumble bug’) that clearly signal broader, more familiar spectrums of life experience. Letterpress printed, the book incorporates the classic elements of wood block and type, rubber-based ink, linocuts, and hand-sewn binding. Produced in 2004, the book is still available in limited edition through several boutique sellers.

Some projects emerge as unique tributes to the memory of a loved one, such as a book containing meticulously executed Xerox transfers of old photographs representing the home property of a student’s great-grandparents. And, yet other projects defy conventional 2-D forms. Tiny Chinese scrolls tied with a ribbon are placed in an equally tiny test tube. Another is a four-letter-word scramble flexagon. In the just concluded semester-long letterpress course, each student was expected to produce a printed, folded piece of paper which then would be added to an origami masu class portfolio box.

While students are encouraged to create works simple enough to produce multiple copies for their peers and teachers in the program with the same precision employed in the prototype, the process is complex for the decisions it involves – paper, color, size, text placement, visual intent and iconic effect, to name a few. In fact, every course assignment hinges on the same precepts of how form fulfills function: “The folds must contribute to the communication of the idea” or “the book format should be instrumental in the communication of your intent.”

The University of Utah’s book arts program, which includes the fine-press limited edition releases of Red Butte Press, has gained an excellent reputation since the press was established in 1984 and the course activities were initiated in 1995. Marnie Powers-Torrey, managing director and instructor, played a prominent role in the founding of the College Book Art Association in 2008, which now has 19 member institutions from around the country and will be holding a conference next month in San Francisco.

The state board of regents also is expected to approval the school’s book arts curriculum as an academic certificate program. Barely more than a handful of similarly accredited undergraduate programs in this discipline exist around the country.

“I am an educator and a printer who, along with my colleagues at the Book Arts Program and Red Butte Press, both impulsively and philosophically believe in the lasting power of the printed image and word,” Powers-Torrey says, adding that as the digital age continues to be immersed in our lives, the enrollment of students and community members in the program courses has increased steadily.

The scope of expression evidenced in the student projects should hearten anyone who worries about the side effects of total digital immersion. Passion and personal engagement underscore the hunger to become, as Powers-Torrey explains, a modern renaissance person who values the skills to analyze critically, distill context, and synthesize the elements of form, content, and design. The art of creating a book form parallels the writing process in every manner.

Perhaps, as Krozser has written, we’ll be able to distinguish which stories can be chronicled in every imaginable format, which stories lend themselves best to the digital media, and, finally, those which are best suited for the pace of turning the page in a beautifully crafted printed book.

Recently, Art Spiegelman, in an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, explained, “So, if I need a textbook that’s going to be out of date because of new technological inventions, you’re better off having it where you can download the supplements or the update. If you’re going to read a quick mystery model to keep you amused when you’re traveling, it’s fine.”

In other words, it’s not a question of business viability. It is a question of lasting artistic value – for an individual who decides which books will be essential to his or her lifetime personal library. That is the impetus of the Red Butte Press, which has produced exceptional limited edition works that steadily increase in value. Many of these books, which often take two to three years to produce, start at $650 and some editions run upwards of $1,500. Many runs only include between 100 and 150 copies with a few running up to 400.

One of the most stunning examples is ‘Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known,’ a collection of poems by Nigerian poet and playwright Wole Solynka who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. In this edition, the poems – originally published in 2002 – are set in an edition featuring a quartet of original color woodcuts by Robert Kleinschmidt, an artist who has deeply inspired Powers-Torrey’s commitment to the art form. The book’s unusual wire edge binding also features boards covered in Japanese Kyosei-shi handmade paper. A small number of deluxe editions also were produced that are covered in suede.

Red Butte Press releases always bring together artists from around the nation as well as the globe. Victoria Hindley, who designed the Samarkand book, also led the project for an edition of Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Firebird’s Nest’ which features four linoleum cuts designed by Alfredo Benavidez Bedoya, an Argentinean printmaker. Bound in yellow ostrich leather, the drop-spine box, designed by hand as well, is covered in black silk.

When ‘Something Lived, Something Dreamed: Urban Design and The American West’ featuring an original essay about sustainable architectural design by William McDonough, was released in 2004, the production involved more than 50 skilled artists from six states with Hindley once again serving as designer. The cotton paper came from an Italian mill while the book covers were made from a single sycamore tree that had been reclaimed from an urban construction site.

Two Utah woodworkers fabricated the covers, which also featured recycled aluminum, while the text was printed on a handpress dating to the middle 19th century. The book, which came to 125 copies in the production run, included hand-inked letterpress monoprints by Chris Stern and hand binding.

The book was acknowledged with many awards including the American Institute of Graphic Arts 50/50 honors in 2006 as one of the 50 best designed books of the year. More significantly, McDonough’s essay, which has not been published elsewhere, has formed the foundation for many discussions around the country for gaining a seminal understanding of the form and function of sustainable urban design.

Red Butte Press selections always emphasize the extensive collaborative nature of the work. At the centenary of Wallace Stegner’s birth, Red Butte Press released a book containing the author’s famed essay ‘To A Young Writer,’ as well as new text by Wendell Berry and Lynn Stegner. The book’s production was a prominent choice as the University holds Stegner’s archives and the project involved collaborators not only at the school but also from Indiana, New York, and California.

This was the second Stegner issue by the press, which released a 1995 edition of his ‘Wilderness Letter.’ The centenary edition run, which included three original engravings by Barry Moser and was bound in wood, cloth, and calfskin, was limited to 125 copies.

As for the students, the book arts studio provides an instructive change of pace from the now-conventional digital environment where pressing buttons and clicking cursors facilitate information gathering and distribution. Located on the fourth floor of the library, the studio invites students to calibrate and finesse their tactile and physical movement capabilities, working with equipment that demands a firm yet gentle lift, jerk, or press.

Depending upon the required skill level of the course, students set letterpress type, where each character is a unique piece of metal, by hand. The studio has gradually amassed a collection of rare fonts and styles that otherwise might have ended up in scrap heaps or in storage lockers to be forgotten. Students respect how old-school technology gains a new lease on life as a form of artistic expression.

The book arts program, which received one of the city’s Mayor’s Artist Awards at this year’s Utah Arts festival, has been a primary force in establishing a worthwhile presence for the hands-on printing enterprise in Salt Lake City and in the surrounding area. These include Sycamore Street Press, Birdbrain Press, Saltgrass Printmakers, and other numerous independent artists who’ve established their creative livelihood throughout the country. Staff members also have worked extensively with the Utah Humanities Council and other organizations on a variety of public festival programming.

At the age of 20, Daria Hosseinyoun, who graduated from an accelerated program at the University of Southern California so he could take the reins in his father’s company, already appeared to be set for a lifetime of success but the thought of missing something essential bugged him: “I had everything and I had nothing.”

To most, he had it all: a loving family, the car of his dreams, a beautiful girlfriend, two houses, and a family business to fall back on but something was missing. “All I want is happiness and it’s not there,” he said.

When one of his closest friends died at the age of 21, he was shaken to every root of his being. Witnessing death for the first time, he questioned every aspect of life including the origins of suffering and happiness.

From the age of 16, he always had been curious about deep contemplation and meditation as he aspired to learn the essence of Buddhism. At the age of 22, he set out on an adventure that forever changed his life. He learned from experts in their respective fields about Aikido, yoga, and Buddhism. Authorities such as 8th dan instructor Isoyama Shihan, who has taught many globally known individuals, freely shared their knowledge of the truth of Aikido. Also, he studied at the Sivananda ashram where the spirit and teachings of Sivananda, regarded as an authority on Vedanta yoga, remains intact in its legacy. Finally, his encounters in Nepal with one of the foremost monks in the Nyingma lineage were especially transformative as he imparted deep fundamental Buddhist truths that normally would take years to grasp and comprehend.

As he ventured through Mongolia, Bali, Japan, India, Nepal, and Mount Everest, he kept meticulous journals that became the basis for his first book which is scheduled to be published in 2012. His story does not disappoint. Every emotion he experienced is evident in this youthful, energetic, and passionate chronicle.

Always running nonstop, Daria sat for a quick 15-question chat on Twitter with The Selective Echo. He answered some questions about what readers can expect from his book.

15 Questions on Twitter

@DariaHoss What are five words to describe Daria Hosseinyoun?

@selectiveecho Selectively curious, kind-hearted, stubborn at times, open-minded, culturally diverse

@DariaHoss Did you hesitate about taking this trip?

@selectiveecho I initially had doubts but once I decided on it, the hesitation vanished and turned to excitement.

@DariaHoss Had you intended originally to write a book about your experiences?

@selectiveecho No, the plan was to have a journal for myself to reminisce on, but so many encouraged me to write about it.

@DariaHoss What surprised you most about your experiences during your travels?

@selectiveecho How often the foods made me sick. I always had an upset stomach and lost 25 lbs.

@DariaHoss How did your parents react to your decision to make this journey?

@selectiveecho My father loved the idea. My mother was worried about the inherent dangers but quickly became supportive.

@DariaHoss Why is “Roots of Gratitude” so important to the title?

@selectiveecho After a year I realized that a billionaire without gratitude is poor & a poor man with it is a billionaire.

@DariaHoss Does this spiritual journey ever reach a satisfying conclusion?

@selectiveecho No, it is a lifelong journey. When the time is right and I am mentally ready, I will return to the path.

@DariaHoss Your account is candid. How (or) do you protect the innocent and the guilty in your book?

@selectiveecho I show ppl as I saw them & unfriendly characters became close friends as they were initially misunderstood.

@DariaHoss You were just in your early 20s when you did this. Does age really matter in this experience?

@selectiveecho Mental preparedness supersedes the importance of age in a journey like this. I believe that the mind is our most fragile & powerful tool. It should be nurtured so as not to receive information that can damage it.

@DariaHoss How do stories from different countries weave into the narrative of the journals?

@selectiveecho Every country prepared me 4 what was coming next. Had I started in Nepal, my journey would’ve been a failure.

@DariaHoss What was the biggest surprise you learned about yourself in writing this book?

@selectiveecho Looking back at the events gave me a better sense of the events that unfolded.

@DariaHoss Who was your biggest inspiration as a teenager?

@selectiveecho My history teacher, who actually wasn’t even my teacher, took hours after school to discuss philosophy & life.

@DariaHoss What advice do you have for anyone who might embark upon a similar trip?

@selectiveecho Say no to nothing. Embark on your journey as if you are about to jump out of a plane, with full faith knowing the universe will be your parachute.

@DariaHoss Any advice about the quest for spirituality especially for young people?

@selectiveecho Don’t take more than you can handle; the mind is fragile. Trust in something greater. Great faith is the backbone for great accomplishments.

@DariaHoss What’s in store for your future?

@selectiveecho I’m taking on a new experience: business. I am open 2 life’s cycles. Each experience sets up what comes next.

From the perspective of those in the business of marketing the arts or managing large cultural enterprises, how does one approach the purest and most passionate aesthetic sense when it cannot be neatly categorized in numbers or demographics?

One of the many impressive epiphanies in Megumi Sasaki’s cinematic celebration of Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who amassed one of the most voluminous collections of contemporary art while living on the most modest of means, is that we must transcend the conventional definitions of what constitutes a truly intellectual audience when it comes to the arts. The pristine love of art that a retired U.S. Postal Service employee and a Brooklyn librarian demonstrate emphasizes that a culture need not be predicated upon speculative commercialism, jaded universalism, or elitist sensibilities. On the other hand, Sasaki makes it quite clear that this is an enormously complex venture.

The 2008 film ‘Herb and Dorothy’ will be screened Friday, Dec. 9, at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (formerly known as the Salt Lake Art Center) as part of the free, public Creativity in Focus series sponsored with the Utah Film Center.

Essentially, Sasaki shatters the conventional ideals of what it means to be an authentic art collector especially during a time when art works commanded skyrocketing prices at gallery and art house auctions and the cult of personality played as much – if not more than – a major role in propelling the success of particular artists. The documentary was the first film for Sasaki, an independent journalist who initially heard about the Vogels in 2002 when she was working on a feature about Christo and Jeanne-Claude at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (Photo above is ‘Herb at 80′ by Lucio Pozzi.)

Ten years earlier, as viewers learn in the film, the Vogels had given the collection free to the institution, which at that time already amassed more than 2,000 works of art. Years later, the number of works had swelled to nearly 4,800. The Vogels still live in Manhattan. Herb will turn 90 in February and Dorothy is 76.

One of the many fascinating scenes in the film is how the National Gallery personnel were startled when they saw how much work had been crammed into the tiny Manhattan apartment the Vogels called home. When the initial collection was brought to Washington, D.C. for cataloguing, it took five 40-foot tractor-trailer rigs to transport the works. In fact, the collection’s size was so overwhelming that the National Gallery established a program in which a major gallery in each state received 50 Vogel works for its permanent collection. In Utah, the works are housed in the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art on the Utah State University campus in Logan. (Photo is ‘Dorothy’s Seascape’ by Pat Steir.)

However, the film’s richest moments come in scenes where the Vogels interact with artists. Among the most memorable was shot in artist James Siena’s studio where, after a few minutes of conversation, ask that the cameras be turned off as they try to complete a deal. Despite all of the attention, the couple preserved their integrity, refusing to ever leaven their discussions about art with money or how much a work costs. On the other hand, the Vogels make it clear in acknowledging the necessity of the monetary aspect of art and how it ensures the survival of both the artists and the institutions which showcase them.

For more information about the film and the series, see here. And, for more information about the Vogel Collection, see here.

“It’s thankless work,” says Matt Caputo. “There are never-ending hurdles. We have to scramble every time the cooler breaks down and the repairs are not like any normal refrigeration work. Coils have to be replaced every 18 months and the cost goes up rapidly each time. After two separate nights when the cave was completely off, we had to push a thousand times harder around the clock to make sure that every setting for the cheeses was correct.”

With maintenance costs atop the initial setup that ran upwards of $65,000, the Caputo’s cheese cave, three and a half years running, readily classifies as a sinkhole for money. That is, if one examines the venture from a purely business accounting perspective.

However, Caputo’s core business model considers that authenticity cannot be mass-produced. Viewed as incidental to the longer project of building a food culture where the revival of traditional agricultural products and markets engages the interest of individual customers, the maintenance headaches and unexpected costs constitute a worthy investment.

“The learning curve has been incredibly steep but we’re gaining more confidence as we near plateaus for some of our best artisanal cheeses,” he says. Likewise, employee Antonia Horne has embraced her role, keeping a fantastically detailed notebook of the aging (affinage) activity in the cave that helps Caputo and others know just when a cheese is at its perfect state for sampling.

Of all the specialty foods carried at Caputo’s, cheese is the most complex. It is a “living product” that must be handled with exceptional care. Shipped or handled improperly, it easily can be destroyed. And, then, aging – which requires an environment of controlling temperature and humidity with the precision of a scientific lab setting – must allow the ecology of the correct molds to be manifested in bringing out the cheese’s full complement of terroir and tasting notes. In the cave, for example, a young Chaource which is slightly sour with a fruity flavor touched with a small acidic tone matures within three and a half weeks into a small smooth, creamy, mushroomy round.

One of the most promising successes has been the cheddar, covered with butter-soaked bandages and aged in house from fresh curd to finish ($19.95/pound). At 11 months, the cheese offers interplay of acid and sweet notes, along with mild to strong flavors suggesting asparagus and horseradish opens up a sense of terroir never possible in its mass produced counterpart.

Aged at least six months and preferably longer – up to 10 to 16 months – Grotte Caputo ($14.95/pound) mixes hints of sweetness and nuttiness with a sharp ambrosial profile in a cheese made from Holstein milk in Wisconsin. A remarkably versatile companion to most wines, the cheese epitomizes Caputo’s essential role in being a genuine intermediary when it comes to communicating the distinguished pedigree and place of cheese for the customer.

Furthermore, cheese buying at Caputo’s is a distinct customer-friendly process. First, customers get as much as they want or need from a particular cheese. In fact, because affinage is so vital to bringing out a cheese’s exceptional qualities, one is better off only buying enough for a specific use or occasion. Indeed, the cheese, left in one’s refrigerator at home surrounded by a common plastic wrap, loses a good deal of its vitality.

Some also might flinch at paying $20 or more per pound for some cheeses but once one realizes just how much taste and flavor can be obtained at $5, $8, or $10, the price-quality-value paradigm is readily evident. And, there are quite a few cheeses that are spectacular bargains in the $12-$15 per pound range. The point is that cheese aging not only guides artisan cheese producers in navigating the market but it also helps cheese consumers – literally on a person by person basis – to comprehend the often-invisible realities of artisan production.

It’s not primarily about short-term profitable margins. It’s about building a long-term trust for a complex product – for the artisanal producer as well as the customer who relies on Caputo and his colleagues to recommend the best product for his or her needs, desires, and expectations.

Without a doubt, the cave provides an excellent pretext for cultivating relations with local cheese producers. A solid example is Kings’ Peak, one of the cheeses from Snowy Mountain Sheep Creamery in Eden, Utah. The dairy is well known for it exceptional standards of cleanliness that minimize to the least extent any need for antibiotics. Appropriate for an authentic cheese-making farm, the milk designated for cheese production is fed directly into an enclosed system, further emphasizing the attention to scrupulous sanitary conditions.

A smear rind cheese, Kings’ Peak ($23.99/pound) is a half and half blend of milk from Lacaune sheep and Guernsey cows. Aged for three months, this cheese capitalizes upon all of the key strengths one would find in a traditional Fontina from the Valle d’Aosta region. It’s ideal in its whole pure form or as a great cheese melt.

Snowy Mountain Creamery’s location nearly replicates the unique Alpine climate and topographical conditions but the conditions nevertheless impart a Utah terroir to its cheese that rises well above the impression that it merely imitates its European counterpart.

Another Fontina ($17.99/pound) from the Italian Alpine producer Fromagerie La Haut Val d’Ayas is made from the milk of the region’s breeds of cows including red-brindle, black-brindle, chestnut. Intensely floral, the cheese’s sweetness matures even with a short aging time in the cave, along with its pungent aroma. Opened in 2002, the Italian cooperative works with 65 local farmers and uses more than 2 million liters of milk annually to produce some 18,000 pounds of cheese.

One of the most successful and popular cheeses coming out of the cave is Ossau-Iraty, which is usually aged for an additional one to six months in the cave after it has arrived. This cheese, produced by Onetik and made from sheep’s milk, has phenomenal nutty and caramelized notes that are beautifully expressed after aging. The name refers to two rivers in the French Basque region, which gives the spectacular terroir distinction to these cheeses, including a Tome de Vache Basque.

Onetik selections range in price from the high teens to $25.99 per pound but note that even small quantities of these intensely flavored cheeses go a long way.

Several Basque-origin cheeses have produced notable results from their time in the cave, even as they are temperamental. For those looking to sampling something different from the first-rate Taleggio offered in the store, the goat milk Pau Mathieu($26.99/pound) is a stunner. The oddly intoxicating funky aroma of this washed rind cheese gives way to a richly complex layered profile of sweetness and nutty tasting notes that is versatile at either end of the dinner course sequence.

After several months in the cave, the cheese’s creamy paste grows big in savory taste with a firmer texture. The goats, which feed on the Basque mountain region’s indigenous plants, are raised on the hillsides barely ten to fifteen minutes away from the Mediterranean coast.

One of the best bargains ($13.99/pound) from the cave is a Livradois Raclette that outdoes its lackluster counterparts with fertile, lively tastes not normally expected in this cold winter supper classic. Made from raw milk in Auvergne, this cheese has a sweet creamy texture and flavor that intensifies with nutty and earthy mushroom tones once it’s been aged. The Raclette already has been aged for two to three months once it arrives at the store but an additional month in the Caputo’s cheese cave lifts this cheese significantly from ordinary heights.

However, the cave is not the only focus of Caputo’s rapidly developing cheesemonger program. The staff continues to cultivate its offerings for cheeses that are shipped with extremely meticulous care and which can be offered directly from the case. But, again, the emphasis is on discovering artisanal cheeses that often pleasantly surprise customers who begin to compare those against the more familiar offerings.

A solid example comes in the Fleur du Maquis ($30/pound), a marvelous representation of the interplay of French terroir and Italian influences. The cheese, which takes its name from the thick bush cover that made it easy for thieves and robbers to hide, comes from ewe’s milk that is cured with rosemary, juniper, and fennel along with a subtly handled hint of tiny chiles.

This cheese stands nicely up to Spanish white wines, Rieslings, and a good range of light to medium red wines. Versatile in every respect, the cheese not only imparts a deeply satisfying spreadable creaminess but it also offers up crumbling bits that work well in many southern European dishes.

For more information, see here.

The credits that rolled at the end of each of the outstanding quartet of films, which was screened for the first time to a sold-out audience in the 500-seat Jeanne Wagner Theatre in downtown Salt Lake City, provide ample evidence of that spirit.

No doubt, and with great justification, the audience cheered on the filmmakers likewise. In its ninth year, the staff and students involved in PitchNic, once again, demonstrate just why Spy Hop is a powerhouse for youth multimedia arts with a growing national reputation. And, for those of us who attend these screenings every year, it never fails to impress just how that bar for continuous improvement is raised in each cycle. For this writer, there is already the anticipation for what next year’s corps of young directors, producers, and cinematographers will offer. One easily can see that same excitement in Frank Feldman and Josh Samson, the program mentors.

The opening short film ‘Dinner’ – a film by Laela Omar, Erin Cole and James Hadden – is a good first course for stimulating the dialogue about why so many families find it so difficult – and even awkward – to sit together for dinner. The student filmmakers, who include interviews with a family counselor as well as Liz Edmunds, better known as the Food Nanny on Brigham Young University’s public television programming, illustrate a curious irony that only has become more apparent with food becoming the political lightning rod it has become. Perhaps we need a healthy dose of collective embarrassment – or even shame – about why our national diet is in the state it is. The students set the stage for realizing how making and eating dinner together as a family can sew the seeds for learning more about food and breaking our own worst bad food habits.

‘Delayed’ – by Emalie Ruffy and Rowan Eyzaguirre – was a thoroughly enjoyable comic fictional short about three rock musicians, whose trip to the biggest concert of their careers takes several incredible detours, including the kidnapping of the lead singer. From a dancing cactus to a multi-colored VW Beetle and to a cast of strange characters whom one could realistically expect to encounter on a dusty desert road, the film let the comedy speak for itself without forcing or repeating the humor.

‘River’s End’ – a fictional short story by Mikkel Richardson, Anna Berbert, and Rodrigo Arroyo – stands out as one of the most mature narratives put to film in PitchNic. There is a distinct sense of emotional familiarity for any viewer who ever contemplated running away from home or who had lost contact with a childhood friend. The film follows a 12-year-old boy who runs away from home with his imaginary friend in hopes of reaching the seacoast. Covering four days, the story shows all the starkly real turns and twists one faces at that inevitable moment when childish ideas and dreams blur and fade away. The film succeeds so magnificently because the creative voice of youth – embodied in the trio of filmmakers as well as the pair of child actors – conveys a child’s point of view with an acute sobriety and significance that frankly would not be possible if made by an older adult.

Finally, ‘Trashed’ – by Mallory McDaniel, Connor Estes, and Jon Tatum – was a snappy, well-paced look at ‘freegans,’ who go through Dumpsters behind grocery and retail stores to retrieve food and other goods, mainly as a way of making a larger political statement about consumer waste and environmental politics. The film went a good solid way to challenge convincingly the stigma of ‘freegans,’ which tend to chaff people much in the same way that the Occupy Movement has managed lately. Instead of focusing too much on a potentially polarizing political message, the filmmakers show and tell the evidence of their searches in a way that legitimately raises the eyebrows of any conscientious consumer. In particular, the film shows plenty of examples in which remnants and materials are repurposed into wearable and usable goods. They effectively counter the often-stereotypical delegitimizing portrayals of ‘freegans’ and they narrow the distance between the political messaging underlying what ‘freegans’ do and what they hope to accomplish.

Many previous PitchNic short films have been featured in various festivals around the country and each of these films deserve the attention. Likewise, each film also merits serious consideration for next summer’s Utah Short Film of The Year at the 2012 Utah Arts Festival.

For more information about Spy Hop, see here.

Perhaps the best way to summarize the key lesson from Celine Danhier’s 2010 documentary ‘Blank City,’ the next offering in the Creativity in Focus series sponsored by the Utah Film Center and the Salt Lake Art Center is that collaboration is the best strategy for any do-it-yourself artist. The documentary will be screened Friday, Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Salt Lake Art Center.

The strongest element of the 95-minute film is the impressive depth of research Danhier brings to the project, which examines the formative punk and hip-hop influences that propelled the No Wave music and film movement and the ‘Cinema of Transgression’ approach in New York City during the 1970s and 1980s.

Despite the rich bounty of clips from more than 30 films – many of which offend, provoke, and startle unapologetically – ‘Blank City’ sags noticeably at times when the various artists get either too nostalgic or repetitive. Nevertheless, one gets a solid sense of what artists, with little or no money and equipment, did in pre-Internet days – when crowd sourcing was done the old-fashioned way.

The tone of the No Wave movement matched the moody, often depressing and pessimistic, circumstances New York City faced during the 1970s with a struggling economy and persistent threats of bankruptcy. Anarchy and nihilism inspired artists to congregate in cheap tenements and occasionally steal in order to bankroll their films, which mostly were shot on Super 8 cameras and occasionally in 16-mm film. Viewers will immediately recognize Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, John Lurie, Lydia Lunch, Deborah Harry and others (including Lung Leg, a performance artist that is known best only to the most devoted No Wave fans) – all of whom collaborated by way of their networks of friends to make music, films, and street art. They may have been economically disenfranchised but they were enormously productive and one can see how many of them went on to successful careers.

Jarmusch, who moved to New York City from Akron as a teenager in the 1970s, made his first film ‘Permanent Vacation’ in 1980. The film’s cast included individuals who had never acted before and Jarmusch’s advisors at New York University’s Tisch School did not accept the project as his thesis, indicating that it wasn’t worth their time. Of course, Jarmusch, now in his late 50s, has won many international awards for his work, including ‘Broken Flowers’ in 2005, which earned, among other honors, the Cannes’ Grand Jury Prize.

Harry found phenomenal success with Blondie, which started at venues such as Max’s Kansas City and CBGB and rocketed to international fame in 1978.

Others have remained countercultural mainstays such as filmmaker Nick Zedd, who is credited with coining the term ‘Cinema of Transgression.’ One of the best-known names in underground cinema, one of his films – ‘They Eat Scum’ (1979) is discussed in Danhier’s documentary. Another is the bizarre yet still intriguing cinematic treatment of his formal break-up with girlfriend Lydia Lunch, who also starred in ‘Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.’

‘Blank City’ would have benefited from making the connections of how these artists explored other creative venues for their. Kathy Acker, who wrote the script for Bette Gordon’s ‘Variety’ feature film, also is well known for her feminist writings. Lunch is a well-regarded performance poet and David Wojnarowicz, perhaps the most controversial artist featured in the documentary, published a great deal of his writings along with his boundary-busting films and photography. He died in 1992 of AIDS.

Highly instructive, the documentary also features several good clips with John Waters, who puts a sharp focus to the right context in comprehending this flourishing period of radical creativity.

For more information about the series, see here.