I’m lucky to be living right across the street from one of the city’s preeminent artists, shown here with his equally artistic wife Donna Pence. They’re the sort of folks you’ll find at public protests, such as this one staged on the grounds of the Utah State Capitol building, where inside, Donald Trump, surrounded by a motley crew of slavering sycophants, was busy signing away one of our prized national monuments.
Besides being flaming liberals, Paul and I have something else in common, in that we both did stints at KUTV television news, albeit at different times. When I worked there, the news was delivered by a stone-faced anchorman by the name of Doug Mitchell. Nowadays, the somber anchorman is gone, replaced by a much younger Ken and Barbie team. Reporters, also young and beautiful, file reports remotely, the idea being that if someone stands near where something happened earlier, where nothing remains but a safety cone or a ribbon of yellow crime tape, the effect is somehow more informative. Paul Heath wasn’t a reporter, but a graphic designer, and to my knowledge he only appeared on camera once, doing a live stand-up in the studio parking lot, describing a mudslide that had closed highway 6 at a spot 70 miles to the south, several hours earlier.
To put it mildly, neither of us regrets no longer working in television. Nowadays, Paul and Donna have collaborated on a number of public installations, and I’m pleased to be the owner of several of Paul Heath’s paintings, the most recent of which features a tiny toy tin car I unearthed in my backyard.
I believe it was the poet John Ciardi who said, “That which is looked at significantly IS significant.” I can think of no better description of how Paul Heath views his world.