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A UVU student’s artwork was rejected from a school exhibition. Here’s how she made sure her work was seen.

Jaya Betts is an artist and student at Utah Valley University.

(Trent Nelson  |  The Salt Lake Tribune) Artist Jaya Betts at Utah Valley University in Orem on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Artist Jaya Betts at Utah Valley University in Orem on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.

In the art world, rejection can be the end all. It can hinder creativity, put an end to an artwork’s fledgeling life, or catalyze a creative block.

For Utah Valley University art student Jaya Betts, rejection proved to be just another prompt.

When her work was rejected from UVU’s 2025 Student Art Exhibition, she took it upon herself to make sure her art made it in front of exhibit goers — through a guerrilla art drop on the opening day of the exhibition.

“Sometimes you get in, sometimes you don’t, no hard feelings,” Betts said. “It’s like alchemizing a situation, turning something bad into something good.”

Betts didn’t want to wallow in her discouragement over the rejection. Nor did she only want to feel like an artist when her work was accepted. She didn’t need a wall or frame to know that her art mattered.

As an artist, Betts said she’s interested in “action and doing” — so, she took matters into her own hands and crafted a new piece of art with a fiery passion as a response to her rejection: a zine called, “Unchosen but Unstoppable: A Manifesto for Artists Who Refuse to Shrink.”

On the opening night of the exhibition, Betts visited UVU’s Lakemount Museum, where she stuck 75 copies of her zine throughout the mansion-turned-museum, in crooks and crannys, on tables and in the bathrooms (“places they don’t control,” Betts said), but not on anyone else’s artwork — and documented the artistic feat on social media.

The zine is a combination of Betts’ artwork and words, a response to being rejected, though, she is clear that it is her interpretation of her rejection and not the actual words anyone from UVU said to her.

In the zine, she writes, “...because the walls don’t hold me, and the rules don’t suit me, and the gatekeepers don’t scare me.”

“I was standing my ground as an artist,” Betts said. “It wasn’t a reflection about my feelings. It’s a call to every artist who has been told their work isn’t good enough…I’m a believer that art doesn’t need permission to exist.”

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) A detail from a zine created by Jaya Betts, in Orem on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.

After her rogue art drop, UVU’s Museum of Art reached out to Betts through a direct message on Instagram to thank her for coming to the opening, and explaining that the juror changes every year. “It’s not about keeping folks out, but rather highlighting a group of students’ work each year who do something particularly well, powerfully, or uniquely,” the message said.

Betts submitted one piece to the show, a layered plaster mold called, “Crimson Blossoms on a Golden Limb” — the first piece she created in her mold making class.

After creating the mold, Betts, who said she utilizes recycled materials in her artwork, blended up cardboard and egg cartons to make her own paper mache casting. She found out in early March that her work hadn’t been accepted, but also noticed that there were several students who had more than one accepted entry in the exhibition.

“If it was one work per student, then 10 to 15 more students could have been included,” Betts said, “It’s just denying students the exposure [and] opportunity that irritated me. For a school, it should be really striving for creating equal opportunities for all students.”

The student art exhibition runs from April 1-30 and features recent work from art and design students at the Orem university. Scott Trotter, director of communications at Utah Valley University, wrote in a statement that “students are allowed to enter up to three pieces of art in three different categories.”

In a written statement, Courtney Davis, the dean of the school of arts and executive director of the school’s art museum, said there were a total of 394 submissions entered to the show this year and 89 were ultimately accepted. The exhibition was juried blindly by Jared Steffensen, Curator of Exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.

“This is a highly competitive opportunity that reflects the rigor and standards of the professional art world,” Davis wrote. “While not all students are selected, the process itself offers an exceptional real-world learning experience… Experiences like this build resilience, confidence, and a deeper understanding of artistic practice in a broader context. "

Betts said she is proud of herself for not just accepting the “no” and making sure her art was seen — even if it wasn’t displayed in a frame on a wall.

“I can say that my work was in that show, and weirdly enough, it has been such a better experience than my work getting accepted into a show,” she said.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Artist Jaya Betts outside of the UVU Museum of Art in Orem on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.


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