Come to the opening of Loose Parts, tomorrow, Saturday March 14th starting at 2pm at the downtown Salt Lake City public library in the children’s gallery!
1. Loose Parts in Play-Dough #2
Children’s blocks, solder, chain
10 × 10 inches 2026
2. Loose parts holes and sticks
wood, sculptamold, apoxie clay, gouache
10 x 17.5 inches 2026
3. Sign for the show!
Thanks again to everyone who came out to the opening of Loose Parts! This show has been very fun to make and a satisfying cross over of my life as a preschool teacher and an artist. The show is up until April 19th. Go to the library!!
Play-dough parts #2
wood, sculptamold, apoxie
clay, gouache
20 × 16 inches 2026
Play-dough parts #1
wood, sculptamold, apoxie clay, gouache, acrylic
14 × 11 inches
2026
“This body of work comes directly from my time working as an early childhood educator here in Salt Lake City. In the classroom, children learn through their bodies. They lift, drag, stack, tear, press, and repeat. They think with their hands. Knowledge grows through connection with materials that have weight, resistance, and possibility.
The work in this exhibition draws from the objects and structures found in early learning environments. Paper, clay, loose parts, play-dough-like forms, and large floor-based objects act as both sculptures and invitations. They are meant to be played with.
In early childhood education, loose parts are open-ended materials that children can move, combine, and transform. They do not have a fixed purpose. A stick can be stacked, rolled, carried, or lined up. A wool ball can become an animal, a road, or a collection of acorns. Because the materials can be used in many ways, children return to them again and again, discovering new possibilities through play.
This exhibition takes place in a children’s library and includes work that can be physically engaged with. Early childhood learning deserves to be recognized as complex and meaningful. What might we build if we took children’s ways of knowing seriously?“
“Penny” 2026, wood, velvet, solder, acrylic 51 x 74 inches
“Anderson often makes work from their family’s extensive archives, using humor and absurdity to explore issues of religion, family dynamics and domesticity. Their latest work focuses on Penny, the family’s donkey and her unfortunate fate.
Framed along side the piece are excerpts from “These Are My Mountains”, a memoir written by Melvin White, Anderson’s grandfather. The texts describe his time with Penny and her staring roll in thefamily’s history.The day of Penny’s death coincides with a larger historical moment,and is what initially drew the artist to this project. The work began as atribute to her, and grew outward into questions about memory,symbolism, and how personal stories quietly collide with political ones.
The overlap between a private loss and a national rupture lingers quietly in the background. The donkey, as an image, carries its own political weight. Like much of their broader practice, Anderson is interested in American symbols by filtering them with their family history and ownlife experience as a queer identifying artist. It asks what happens when national imagery is carried by something as unassuming as a family donkey.”
Thank you again to @queerspectra for your funding and support to realize this project! So grateful!
📸 by @kimraffphoto
“Things taken without asking” wool yarn, needlepoint canvas, acrylic, sequins, 42 x 30, 2025
I’m thrilled to be showing this work tonight with @the_canopy_program_ and @nyccritclub alongside my fellow cohort artist!
Congrats to our little fellowship family on a year of working together. Can’t wait to celebrate.
Im working on a project about my family’s old donkey named Penny who died in a tragic and mysterious way, which as im writing that it sounds like the trailer for a podcast.
But for penny i’m able to produce the work with the support of @queerspectra who is helping with material cost and a funded residency here in salt lake! I feel so grateful to have been accepted into their inaugural residency program!
Stay tuned for details about the show coming in late january.
took the summer offline for our Big Gay Wedding!! 💫
it was a summer solstice wedding at our local park and a parade to our backyard! never did i ever imagine my wedding, and it was a wedding of dreams! I’ll never forget the feeling of laugh~crying so intensely while looking out at our family and friends who were there giving us so much love and support and care.
I love you Kim 💕
@kimraffphoto
