Past Exhibitions
Sunset Portal, October 2025
Oil on canvas triptych
“Sunset Portal” is a three-part exploration of light and threshold—capturing the shifting glow of dusk as both subject and metaphor. In this triptych, Hale examines how atmosphere and emotion intertwine, inviting viewers to pause in the fleeting space between day and night.
CJ Hales works at the intersection of traditional technique and modern execution. Exploring the world through oil paint, Hales views everyday items and scenes as possible subjects for deep emotional expression. Whether a still life, portrait, plein air — or some combination thereof — Hales creates work that seeks to discover the hidden stories in overlooked or undervalued spaces.
“I’m fascinated with the alchemy of paint and strive to keep process and experience on the forefront. The challenge of creating dimensional illusion on canvas with paint. Also honoring the meditation that happens during the push and pull of creation. Allows me to discover paintings and connect in ways I never thought possible.” — CJ Hales
CJ Hales
Pollinators, September 2025
Hand wood carvings with mother-of-pearl inlay and illustrated wallpaper
Jill De Haan’s “Pollinators” is a small celebration of Utah’s native bees, moths, and butterflies—pairing intricate wood carvings and mother-of-pearl inlay with hand-illustrated wallpaper. Each piece honors a local relationship between plant and pollinator: Milkweed + Monarch, Sunflower + Honey Bee, Sego Lily + Bumblebee, and Yucca Plant + Yucca Moth.
An illustrator, lettering artist, and wood carver, De Haan’s work blends craft and nature, capturing the wonder found in the mountains, flora, and fauna of her home state. Growing up in Utah making bows and arrows, collecting unusual rocks, and exploring her grandparents’ vast garden and workshop, she continues to draw inspiration from those early creative roots. Many of their vintage tools and treasures now live in her own studio, informing a practice that connects craftsmanship, nostalgia, and the natural world.
“Loved being part of such a special exhibit and relished highlighting some fun Utah pollinators and the plants they love.” — Jill De Haan
Jill De Haan
August 2025
Han Calder, Nick Carpenter, and Ben Doxey
Stories of hope are ringing out at the Helper Mini. The Great Salt Lake Hopeline is a participatory art project by Han Calder, Nick Carpenter, and Ben Doxey that invites visitors to listen, reflect, and share messages of hope for Utah’s endangered Great Salt Lake.
Part of a larger statewide initiative featuring iconic pink phone booths, the installation collects public voicemails—love letters, memories, and calls to action for this vital body of water. Visitors can pick up the handset inside the Mini to hear a curated selection of these heartfelt recordings, blending sound, storytelling, and environmental awareness.
A full-scale phone booth version was also featured during the Mega Helper Mini Show (August 15–17, 2025), offering guests the chance to record their own messages and add their voices to a growing chorus for the lake’s future.
The Great Salt Lake Hopeline
Helper Sign Museum, July 2025
Blending nostalgia, craftsmanship, and small-town identity, Helper Sign Museum by Brennen Bechtol reimagines the visual language of classic roadside Americana. The exhibition transformed the Helper Mini into a micro–museum of hand-painted signs, neon-inspired lettering, and salvaged typographic fragments that celebrate the fading art of sign painting and the stories embedded in Main Street iconography.
Through his careful attention to scale, texture, and aging surfaces, Bechtol explores how signage shapes place and memory—especially in towns like Helper, where the past lingers in ghost letters and weathered facades. Helper Sign Museum honors that legacy with humor and affection, inviting viewers to see the beauty in the details we often pass by.
Brennen Bechtol
Love Letter to a Garden, June 2025
For her Helper Mini installation Love Letter to a Garden, acclaimed designer, writer, and illustrator Debbie Millman transformed a passage from her book of the same name into a three-dimensional environment—bringing memory, imagination, and place together in poetic form. Inspired by a recollection of a waterfall behind her grandparents’ Brooklyn home, Millman re-created the scene as a miniature diorama within the Helper Mini, merging hand-crafted detail with emotional storytelling.
Rooted in her book Love Letter to a Garden—a meditation on growth, love, and the gardens that shape our lives—the installation explores the beauty of memory and the desire to give form to what we long for. By giving physical form to a memory of a place that never existed, Millman invites viewers to reflect on how imagination and longing intertwine to nurture both art and life.
Named one of the most creative and influential designers working today by Fast Company, Graphic Design USA, and Business Insider, Millman is also the host of the award-winning podcast Design Matters, author of seven books, and an educator whose work spans design, writing, and cultural commentary.
Debbie Millman
Glitch, May 2025
Glitch continues Mike Whiting’s exploration of pixelated form and analog construction. In this work, he bridges the digital and the physical, transforming the imperfections of a “glitch” into something materially precise and unexpectedly human.
Working in painted steel, Whiting distills the visual language of early video games into geometric, sculptural compositions. The result is both nostalgic and modern—where flat pixels gain dimension, and error becomes a source of beauty. Glitch reflects on how technology and memory intersect, asking what remains when the virtual becomes tangible.
Mike Whiting is a sculptor whose work merges minimalism, pop culture, and industrial craft. His large-scale installations and public artworks have been exhibited nationally, known for transforming digital aesthetics into bold physical forms that invite play and reflection.
Mike Whiting
April 2025
Photography-based artist Alexandra Fuller presents a series of hand-printed cyanotypes and photographs created entirely on-site. Rejecting digital compositing, Fuller embraces the elemental process of light, chemistry, and touch to explore environmental loss, imagined resilience, and the possibility of renewal.
At the center of the installation, an interactive rotating cube invites viewers to engage physically with her work—revealing new cyanotype images with every turn. The piece acts as both sculpture and storytelling device, echoing the cyclical nature of destruction and regeneration in fragile landscapes. Created in collaboration with HawkWatch International, the project reflects a shared reverence for ecosystems on the brink and for the creative gestures that help us imagine their survival.
Alexandra Fuller is an artist based in rural Utah, living and working in what she describes as “the most remote town in the Lower 48.” Her practice explores impermanence, transformation, and resilience in communities facing change. Fuller was awarded the Utah Visual Artist Fellowship (2024) and works as a creative director with select brands in travel, tourism, and hospitality.
