Art in the Park: Today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., the Fall Art Market will be taking place at the Sugarhouse Garden Center at the east side of Sugarhouse Park. Stock up on jewelry, seasonal decor, handbags, clothing and more. (Baked goods, included.) Pull on your jacket, and learn more here.

It’s Oktober(fest): Head to the hills (Snowbird, to be exact) on Saturday and Sunday to partake in the your favorite Bavarian festivities. Oktoberfest comes complete with Organ Grinders and Alp Horn performances as well as a cameo from the Yo-Yo Man himself. Check the schedule here, or get more information here.

Dream a Little Dream: Prints by Andy Warhol are the latest to make a stop at the Utah Museum of Fine Art. The screenprint series called “Dream America” will be settin’ Utah eyeballs to “pop” until January 6. Learn more here.

Totally Bazaar: If you’ve got a hankering for Japanese delicacies, stop by the Buddhist Temple (211 W. 100 South) tomorrow at 1 p.m. for the Japanese Food Bazaar. Also on the table, other than sushi, we hope, are crafts and a silent auction. See here for more information.

In Mmmusic: Decide between Deerhoof and Mandy Moore/Rachel Yamagata tomorrow, or forfeit and listen in at the Big Ass Show, also tomorrow. Get the details here.

Sweet Shoes: Get your pretty little hands and feet on a new pair of flats at East Broadway’s Frosty Darling. All styles are 25 percent off through October 13. Talk about a sweet deal.

Have a great weekend. We’ll be back next week with more shopping highlights, tasty pumpkin treats and a giveaway you won’t want to miss.

Swiss Cheese: Still looking for a quick getaway to kick off the long weekend? Strap on your fanny pack and head to Midway Swiss Days. Even if koo-koo clocks and wood-carved insignias aren’t necessarily your favorite things to browse, this fair presents a great opportunity to stock up on homemade baked goods and fresh, mountain air.

Pop Art: Sept. 9 is your last chance to travel through time and space with Robert Sabuda at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. After seeing pop-up display, you can go home and get your origami on with these cards from his site.

Baklava, anyone?: The big fat Greek Festival starts on Thursday and runs through Saturday, Sept. 9. The spread, whipped up by the Greek community, includes souvlaki, dolmathes, spanakopita and lots of other things whose names we can’t pronounce but which we are willing to taste. Get the details here.

A Fair to Remember: If the brilliant ad campaign hasn’t tempted you to head to the Utah State Fair Grounds next week, we don’t know what will. How can you say no to these guys? Keep a big-lipped corndog smiling and visit the Utah State Fair, starting next Thursday and running through Sept. 16. Catch the 11-day schedule of events over here.

And if none of these do it for you, you can always consider a Thursday in the Dogg pound. Have a nice extended weekend. We’ll see you on Tuesday. Lots of good stuff to follow….

For tasting, shopping, viewing and general opinion-making, here are three things worth checking out in and around Salt Lake City this week:

Bite Outta Crime: Get a taste of controversy at Chadder’s, the Utah burger joint that’s currently getting the copycat smackdown from none other than California’s In-N-Out Burger. Call it what you will: “Protein Burger” or “Beef and Leaf, imitation or inspiration, but anything that’s grabbed the attention of America’s other favorite red-and-yellow burger chain sparks our curiosity—along with our tastebuds. On a side note: In-N-Out will finally be opening its doors to St. George burger-lovers as soon as 2008. But in the meantime….

Chadder’s
599 West Pacific Drive
American Fork
(801) 763-0770

Holly Hobby: Attenion Janes-of-all-trades: If you dabble in oil paints, beading bracelets, journal layouts, embroidering pillow-covers, creating tablespreads, cupcake-decorating, invitation-designing, interior decorating or even dollhouse-building, you might as well consider Hobby Lobby your new best friend. The hobby/craft megastore recently continued its westward expansion into the Salt Lake region. You’ll find everything you need to pull off just about anything. Check out the online inventory here, and don’t forget to check out the weekly specials (currently 40 percent off any item!).

Hobby Lobby
1080 N. Main Street
Layton
(801) 444-0210
Open 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

and

Hobby Lobby
11681 S. Parkway Drive
South Jordan
(801) 352-4295
Open 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Rubell With a Cause: “Life After Death: New Leipzig Paintings from the Rubell Family Collection” brings to Salt Lake surrealist works by such acts as Tim Eitel, Martin Kobe, Neo Rauch, David Schnell, Matthias Weischer and more. Words like “strange,” “discordant,” “disaffected,” and “enigmatic” have been used to describe the Eastern German movement, so you get to kill two birds with one stone and improve your vocab as well as your art knowledge.

“Life After Death“
Salt Lake Art Center
20 S. West Temple
Salt Lake City
June 23 through September 29
Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.; and Saturday, 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Dewds. This is pretty cool. But you had better hurry up up up or you’ll miss your chance to behold what is arguably one of Salt Lake’s most-experimental-and-therefore-noteworthy art projects to ever go down. Perhaps in history.

That’s for you to decide, but, regardless, this project will soon be history. That’s because 337 Project will soon get the wrecking ball. That’s the way it was planned.

Inspired by a similar project in New York, the owners of a building at 337 South and 400 East decided to open their doors to the Salt Lake art community prior to tearing it down (as it was rendered unfit for use). The walls of the building were to become the artist’s canvases.

The list of participating artists grew and grew, and Project 337 was born. The art-riddled structure will soon be a goner, and our city’s first-ever LEED-approved condos will be built on the spot.

Now or later, the building at 337 South and 400 East is one you’ll want to visit. But if it’s the art you’re going for, you better make it quick.

Check it out:

337 Project
337 South and 400 East
www.337project.org

Open today, Saturday and Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.

Think the Utah Heritage Foundation is only for old, nose-in-book, library-lovin’ types? Think again, and check out this cool downtown tour the foundation is hosting. Besides, we like library-lovin’ types.

Any fan of urban redevelopment or old-meets-new/new-meets-old architecture should head to the Big D Construction Building (404 W. 400 South) this Saturday at 9 a.m. where you, your friends, and other design buffs can begin a driving tour of seven refurbished downtown buildings and residences—including the elusive FFKR Architecture structure, we believe.

Tickets for Downtown Reborn can be purchased here, by calling 801-533-0858, or day-of at the Big-D building. The cost is $15 for all you UHF members. The rest of us will pay $20 for the 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. educational and eye-opening tour.

Could be your once-in-a-lifetime or at least once-in-a-longtime chance to have some unique Salt Lake doors swung open for your viewing and learning pleasure. Think of what you’ll be able to tell your grandkids!

{Update:} Check out Judy Magid’s fun and informative article on Downtown Reborn in the Salt Lake Tribune: there’s a full list of tour stops and some sneak-peek photos.

Today and tomorrow afternoon mark your once-a-year opportunity to peruse local art and sip on stews from some of the state’s finest restaurants—all on top of the world. OK, maybe just the top of the Wells Fargo Building (299 S. Main Street).

The 19th Annual Celebration of Art and Soup goes down (or up) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and again from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Enjoy sample-size cups of soup from the likes of Blue Boar Inn, Cafe Trio, Caffe Molise, The Dodo, Porcupine Grill, Trofi Restaurant, Panache and Madeline’s Steakhouse. Also enjoy delicacies from Cookietree Bakery and Cakes de Fleur.

A “celebrity” judging panel will give awards for the best soups, but regular gals like us will get vote for people’s choice, and shop for unique artwork to add to our budding collections.

Admission is $15 for lunch or dinner, with proceeds benefiting the Community Nursing Services Home Health and Hospice.

It’s part origami. It’s part pop-up book. It’s labeled as “children’s interest” but there’s no denying that paper engineering is more than just kid stuff: it’s an intricate and innovative process with a uniquely playful nature. That’s why it’s so cool that the art of Robert Sabuda is heading to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts for a five-month tenure starting this Friday with an exhibit called “Travels in Time and Space.”

You may know Sabuda from his complicated pop-up collections like “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “The Christmas Alphabet“—which have delighted many a face during the holidays. The UMFA exhibit will include 60 other works that include batik, paper mosaic, stained glass, pencil and watercolor, cut paper on handmade Egyptian papyrus, Sugikawashi papers and 3-D paper forms. Sounds like Sabuda has been busy.

The show runs through September 9. The UMFA is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Remember, admission is free on the first Wednesday of every month, which means you have six chances to see it all, free of charge.

Get more information here.

There are three reasons you might head to James Anthony Gallery (241 E. Broadway) this weekend.

1. You have a Hollywood crush on a) Zooey Deschanel, or b) Emily Deschanel.

2. You like to spend your leisure time supporting good causes, and proceeds from the current James Anthony Gallery exhibit will benefit the Utah Domestic Violence Council, an intervention organization. (Sorry, we don’t have any chocolate to couple the evening with, this time.)

3. You realize that the photography of clout-carrying Chris Anthony isn’t to be missed. Anthony, a Los Angeles-based once-rock photographer who has worked with such heavy hitters as The Dandy Warhols and My Chemical Romance, is bringing a photographic series titled “Victims & Avengers” to Salt Lake City—a collection that explores domestic violence through 27 photographs, with the Deschanel duo as his models.

The exhibit also includes a limited number of giclee prints, signed and numbered by the artist.

Victims & Avengers runs through April 17. The James Anthony Gallery is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

It’s March, which means you have ten more days to meander through “Post-Modern Utah” at the Salt Lake Art Center.

According to Ali’s hefty copy of “Gardner’s Art Through the Ages” (a book any Art or Art History major owns and paid an also-hefty price for), “post-modernism” is by definition “a reaction against modernist formalism, which is seen as elitist. Far more encompassing and accepting than the more rigid confines of modernist practice, post-modernism offers something for everyone by accommodating a wide range of styles, subjects and formats, from traditional easel painting to installation and from abstraction to illusionistic scenes.”

We’re fans of things that center on acceptance and likewise, we’re not big on being elitist. We like abstraction and illusion, and we’re especially fond of the idea of something that, by definition, “offers something for everyone.” This exhibit features painting, photography and sculptural works.

With roots in pop art, eight Utah artists showcase their attempts to keep the post-modern movement alive and well in 2007. What also makes “Post-Modern Utah” cool is, as the Art Center says, “the artists of ‘Post-Modern Utah’ represent what is particularly new in the visual art in our state, distinct in its regional influences perhaps, but also universal in its post-modern forms of expression.”

And perhaps, also, just another fun stroll through one of the city’s best art galleries.

The Salt Lake Art Center is located at 20 S. West Temple in Salt Lake City. It is open Tuesday through Thursday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

We’re really excited about The Guild of Book Workers 100th Anniversary Exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (410 Campus Drive). Unlike those we featured yesterday, you can get involved with these books without ever having to crack a cover!

In truth, the exhibit seems like a book- and collage-enthusiast’s dream come true. It features recent creations from America’s best bookbinders and book artists, and the works include leather, aluminum and PVC binding methods as well as a collection of pop-ups that range from traditional to sculptural. The content is produced with “varying printmaking methods, calligraphy, photography and digital output,” according to the UMFA website.

The exhibit runs through March 19. The UMFA is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Even better, admission is free on the first Wednesday of every month, which means that you can catch the exhibit on March 7, free of charge.

The museum is hosting an Art of the Book evening for educators on Feb. 21 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. for any and all teachers out there. (You are our heroes!) The workshop is designed to assist teachers in incorporating book art activities in the classroom: “Workshops include a demonstration of the UMFA’s Art-in-a-Box program, a workshop on pop-up books, a demonstration of the Treasure Chest on the History of Books from the Marriott Library and a workshop by book artist Sue Cotter.”

Sounds like good, educational fun.