Guest post by Glen Nelson, Mormon Artists Group
As part of a project I’m working on, I’ve recently had the great pleasure of visiting with members of the Church in their homes and places of business. Without exception, these spaces have been graced by Mormon artists’ works. It’s fun to talk to these collectors and hear the stories behind the art that they clearly love. Often, the artists were members of the family or were dear friends. After having looked at these works daily for many years, these collectors have become the artists’ greatest (and sometimes only) advocates. Maybe it’s just been good luck, but I’ve seen some amazing works in homes, grand and humble.
Equally interesting to me are good art and bad art. Often, the good and the bad hang side by side. The good art could easily find its way into museum collections, if the children and grandchildren ever decide to part with it (which they probably won’t), and the bad (a harsh word but not a wholly inaccurate one) refers to works that were made by family members and friends, and although not accomplished, it is still as meaningful, maybe even more so to the collectors; it is every bit as treasured.
That’s how it is at my house. One of my favorite paintings is by my father. In retirement, my dad told me that he had always wanted to take up painting. I was surprised, and I thought he was joking. I couldn’t ever remember him talking about it before. As Christmas neared a few years before he passed away, I went over to the New York Art Students League, where many great Mormon painters trained in the era of Mahonri Young and Minerva Teichert, and I purchased some brushes, paints, and boards for him. I was calling his 
bluff.
In 1989, he surprised me again by presenting me with a painting that he made for me as a gift. By most standards of art, it’s not good. He loved the mountains, and he painted a scene where he had spent much of his life as a sheepherder, logger, and finally a philanthropist and conservationist. The perspective of the painting is sort of wacky. The highway looks like a grey bike path. It’s not really very inventive, either. But…it does its job to remind me of the beauty of Cedar Mountain, and it certainly prompts me to love both the place and the painter. That’s all it asks.
Many Mormon artists are firmly in the “good” column. And many Mormon artworks fits into the other. Appreciation is sometimes more than simple aesthetics. I see in my collection—and in those of many LDS collectors—a visual embodiment of Mormonism’s emphasis on genealogy. The art on many of these walls is, essentially, an artistic four-generation chart.
How lucky we are to find ourselves in a culture that cherishes such attitudes. As a scholar, however, it poses problems. The works are all around us, but catalogs and inventories of the works aren’t. Maybe someday, we will be able to link these treasures to some online source and study broadly what is seen now only individually. Does any Mormon artist have a catalog raisonné—a full, thorough, and scholarly examination of every work created by an artist? I don’t think so. There is much work to be done and art—good and bad—to love and explore.
(Glen is the founder and director of Mormon Artists Group, based in New York City. The website states, “Mormon Artists Group, founded in 1999, is a collective of creative artists. We publish and sell original artworks (books, music, prints, and collaborative projects), organize exhibitions, readings, concerts, and charitable events, and conduct research on topics related to Mormon Art. We are unaffiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints except for the fact that our participants are past or present members of the Church.”)
The problem of amateur and often low-quality art (of any type, including music and literature as well as the visual arts) is a thorny one. On the one hand, as Mormons we are supposed to encourage people to stretch themselves and try things they aren’t necessarily very good at — aren’t we? With an eye toward eventual improvement, to be sure. On the other hand, there’s the part of us that says standards *must* be adhered to.
For some purposes, we don’t really need to know about all the lower-caliber stuff out there. But as Glen points out, there are many other aspects of scholarship that really require knowledge of the full body of stuff — including purposes such as social/cultural criticism that looks at art.
The problem is not only one of cataloguing but also one of what any given scholar can know.
It’s an exciting time to be a mormon artist! Seems like so much is coming into focus in our Mormon Arts culture, I appreciate you including this beautiful painting by your dad. All art welcome here, good bad and especially ugly!