Board of Directors
Adam Bateman – Board Member
Adam Bateman was raised in Ephraim, Utah, a place with more turkeys than sheep, more sheep than people, and more blue sky than anywhere. He was formally educated at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah with a BA in English and a Spanish Minor, and at Pratt Institute in New York City with an MFA in sculpture. He speaks fluent Spanish, Portuguese, and English and thinks that the fundamentals of language hold the secrets of the universe, life, and everything. He stacks things, arranges things, writes things, attaches things, shapes things, connects things. He likes big buildings as much as he likes the desert panoramas of Utah. In addition to Utah, he’s lived in New York City, Union City, NJ, and Guatemala City, and traveled all around the North/Western half of the world. He’s shown art in three countries, eight states, and fifteen cities. He is currently working as a professional artist, freelance curator, and Director of Birch Creek Service Ranch, an artist residency program, which he co-founded with Eric Peterson. He fully expects to change the world (Utah) by connecting regional art and artists with the larger contemporary art world and by making Utah a relevant and important center for contemporary art.
Chris Anderson – Board Member
Secretary
Development Committee Chair
Chris lives in Spring City, Utah, and is a partner in the regional law firm of Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP, based out of its Salt Lake City office. His law practice focuses on business, securities and international legal issues, and he has extensive background in venture capital transactions for emerging-growth companies, and in the representation of high-technology companies in the initial stages of development. Chris is a past President of the Securities and International Sections of the Utah State Bar. Other nonprofit affiliations include work with the Utah MicroEnterprise Loan Fund, the Tanner Dance Program and Spring City Arts. Chris comes from a large family of art aficionados, enjoys traditional Utah art, and is a closet painter-wannabe. His free time is spent working with his wife, Alison, to restore a pioneer era home, or enjoying the adventures of their four children.
Amy Jorgensen – Board Member
Amy Jorgensen was born in 1972 in Milan, Italy. She received a BFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1997, and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2002. Her work incorporates performance and photography with a willingness to use her own body as both test subject and subject matter in an investigation of personal and cultural assumptions. Her current work examines the body as both repository and author of information. Jorgensen has exhibited her photographs and videos nationwide and is currently working remotely in Utah.
Jeff Lambson – Board Member
Jeff Lambson is curator of contemporary art at the BYU Museum of Art. Prior to coming to Utah he worked at the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC for six years, where he worked on projects including the major Ana Mendieta retrospective which opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and an upcoming retrospective on Guillermo Kuitca co-organized by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Miami Art Museum, which will travel to the Guggenheim Bilbao. Jeff is currently writing a brief biography for Kuitca which will be included in the exhibition catalog.
Jeff is married to Ann Lambson, former director of youth education at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, and lives in Provo with their precocious daughter.
Matthew Choberka – Board President
Matthew Choberka is a painter and Assistant Professor of Art in the Department of Visual Arts at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. He received his M.F.A. in Painting from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 2005, and previously studied at the New York Studio School, the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin, and Columbia College Chicago. His paintings and mixed-media works engage the instability and complexity of the contemporary world, by way of a serial approach to the image that hybridizes the languages of drawing and painting. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Governor’s Island Art Fair in New York Harbor, Raid Projects in Los Angeles, and Beaux-Arts des Ameriques in Montreal. His work is currently represented by galleryELL in Brooklyn and by Beaux-Arts des Ameriques in Montreal.
Matthew lives with his wife Angela, daughter Olivia, and son Luca in Ogden.
Jennifer Lloyd – Board Member
On completion of student teaching in Humanities History at BYU, Jennifer Lloyd (Jenn) interned at the Partners in Education program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. She assisted arts organizations throughout the U. S. in the development and/or expansion of educational partnerships with their local school systems. Teachers in all disciplines received professional development in the arts.
Jennifer spent three years at the Corcoran Gallery of Art as Associate Program Coordinator, where she created and implemented public programs. Later, as a member of the Smithsonian Central Development Team, her responsibility as Donor Relations Coordinator was to manage the affairs of the Smithsonian National Board. Jennifer is currently the Associate Director of Major gifts for LDS Philanthropy at Brigham Young University.
When not at work Jenn enjoys hosting friends and family, scarf dancing, or anything that takes her to the great outdoors, including sailing, hiking, and mountain biking.
Jorge Rojas – Board Member
Jorge Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator. He studied Art at the University of Utah and at Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Rojas employs both traditional and new media, as well as performative elements to investigate communication systems and the effect of technology on artistic production, social structures and communities. His work and curatorial projects have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Mexico, United States, Brazil, and India. He has received grants and fellowships including National Performance Network’s VAN Residency, West Chicago City Museum Artist in Residency Program, and Vermont Studio Center. Rojas’ work is included in numerous private and public collections including The Mexican Museum (San Francisco) and Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach). Since 2009, he produces and curates Low Lives, an international, multi-venue exhibition of networked performances. Rojas recently moved from New York City to Salt Lake City, Utah where he lives with his wife Jenna, and son Felix. He was born in Morelos, Mexico.
www.phenomenaproject.org/node/41
Mikell Stringham-Board Member
Mikell Stringham, a Utah native, is founder and owner of Mondo Fine Art ( www.mondofineart.com ), a gallery that represents local, national and international artists in a pop-up exhibition format, collaborating with various venues and businesses. She is also the founder of the Mondo Art Project (MAP), a passion project connecting children around the world through drawings and murals ( http://www.mondofineart.com/mondo-art-project ).
Mikell received her BA from the University of Utah in business marketing and continued her education in Italy at the Florence University of the Arts, where she studied painting, photography, interior design, and gallery management.
As for community involvement, Mikell currently serves on the Utah Museum of Fine Art Young Benefactor’s Executive Committee which advises on and recommends artists and artworks to be acquired for the museum’s permanent contemporary art collection.
When not curating a show and consulting, or working with MAP, Mikell enjoys traveling – especially to international art fairs!