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COPPER
PALATE
PRESS
Photo: Mitch Allen
By Ryan Hall
dontsignanythingyet@gmail.com
Walk past Gallenson’s Gun Shop on 200
South, turn left into the alley beneath a
gigantic mural of the Virgin Mary, pass
the walls covered with street art and you
will arrive at a small, nondescript building
nestled behind FICE and Este Pizza that is
responsible for simultaneously galvanizing
and blowing up Salt Lake City’s art scene.
A little more than a year old, Copper Palate
Press has quickly gained a reputation
for housing the vanguard of Salt Lake
City’s burgeoning art scene by throwing
killer screen printing parties and being an
unmissable stop on any Gallery Stroll. More
than this, however, the Copper Palate Press
(CPP) communal philosophy—keeping the
overhead low, making sure profits go directly
into the pockets of the artists and putting their
wares directly into the hands of the masses
by selling their art, prints and merchandise
at affordable prices—is responsible for
providing the ever-expanding collective with
a black hole-like gravitational pull for all those
fascinated with SLC’s art scene. Copper
Palate Press is a delightfully motley crew—
old-schoolers who were in high school when
SLUG first burst into SLC’s consciousness
(many of whom have contributed to this fine
publication) mingle freely with new-schoolers
who have hosted their first shows at CPP
within the last year.
SLUG: Tell us about your first experience with
SLUG Magazine.
Cameron Bentley: I first encountered SLUG
when I moved to Salt Lake City a few years
ago right out of high school. I was working at
Graywhale and I have read SLUG ever since.
Clyde Ashby: I was in junior high. Probably
1989. I lived in rural Utah and would come
out to SLC for punk shows. I liked the D.I.Y.
aesthetic of SLUG. It was everything I really
liked about anti-culture and anti-mainstream,
and the fact that it existed in Salt Lake, or
Utah at all, was amazing.
SLUG: How have you seen the magazine
change since then?
Dave Boogert: Locally, it has been a lot of
people in the arts or music scenes that have
helped SLUG push forward with free
work and things like
that.
Angela
has done so much
to help out this city by
expanding it. She has brought in
snowboarding and skateboarding. She has
been able to grow it and expand it and push it
into new territories, and has taken it out of just
a music situation that it was and blown it up
without compromising what it stands for and
what it stood for under JR Ruppel.
SLUG: What is one of the most memorable
SLUG articles that you have read?
Davey Parish: I am going to vote for the
Mike Brown article with C.C. Deville. You
should hear it on the audiotape. It is pretty
hilarious.
SLUG: What is your favorite SLUG cover?
Boogert: The Thunderfist cover that Sri
Whipple did was pretty cool.
Ashby: Christmas four years ago with
Chopper Douglas Styer on the cover with
the Slippery Kittens.
SLUG: Tell us about the most memorable
SLUG event that you’ve attended.
Emilee Dziuk: Craft Lake City. That was the
first SLUG event that I had been to. That was
such a great turnout and there were a lot
of people who
came, great space,
perfect weather.
Parish: I would say the best SLUG events
are the ones you can’t remember.
SLUG: How has SLUG affected your life?
Steve Taylor: Starting out as a punk rock kid
getting into SLUG, it was really useful to have
that magazine to help me direct that craving for
something new all the time. When that craving
broke from a need for punk rock into something
more expansive, SLUG was also there to give
me suggestions in things like hip hop, metal
and so many other genres. I could just open up
any edition, no matter when it was printed, and I
could flip to the back and find those CD reviews
and start reading, and within 15 minutes I would
have a list of CDs I was going to go buy.
SLUG: Why do you think SLUG has continued
to be relevant in Utah for the last 22 years?
Parish: They’ve stayed really local and they’ve
kept the underground “underground” and kept it
coming to you. They’ve evolved in that way.
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