Provo • People were lining up for an hour outside the Alma Gallery during a recent Friday night gallery stroll — waiting to get into the hottest art exhibition on Provo’s historic Center Street.
It’s also the smallest.
Inside an alcove about 3½ feet wide, 3 feet deep and 3 feet high, 8-year-old Luna Hiatt and her mother, Yahaira Marin, crouched inside, pointing at pocket-sized pastel works of water pools and mountain landscapes. At the cubby’s entrance, a pair of magnifying glasses were available for viewers wishing to get a closer look.
Marin said her daughter loves to play with tiny things, like the play food of her Barbie sets. Sometimes, Marin said, Hiatt will wear Barbie’s teensy shoes on the ends of her fingers.
(Shaylee Navarro | The Salt Lake Tribune) A magnifying glass gives a close look of Tiny Art Gallery’s “Me Paint Pretty” exhibit catalogue.
“It’s just instinctual,” Marin said, then adding to her daughter, “you just love tiny things.”
About 300 guests, apparently sharing Hiatt’s love for miniatures, enjoyed the recent opening of Tiny Art Show, an art project created by mixed-media artist McKay Lenker Bayer. From pop-up exhibitions in New York City’s Central Park and Frida Kahlo’s house museum La Casa Azul in Mexico City, Lenker Bayer said she aims to bring “tiny exhibitions to unique spaces.”
“It’s like an obsessive art project,” Lenker Bayer said.
The obsession, she said, started with a class project at Brigham Young University in 2016. The assignment required Lenker Bayer, then an art education major, to display her art in public. She took the challenge and produced a mini art exhibit on Center Street.
(Courtesy McKay Lenker Bayer) Tiny Art Gallery on Provo’s Center Street in 2016. The community art project, launched by Provo artist McKay Lenker Bayer, aims to bring “tiny exhibitions to unique spaces.”
Today, inside a cubby space of the three-story Alma Gallery, Tiny Art Show has found a permanent space for all things miniaturized.
“It feels like you’re in ‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ a Walt Disney production where you’re a giant compared to this tiny world,” said Havoc Hendricks, a Provo artist who’s married to this month’s Tiny Art exhibitor, Laura Hendricks.
The immersive art experience – despite its resemblance to any normal-sized art gallery fitted with wall labels and rack cards – is something that most have probably “never experienced before,” Havoc said.
“You can, honestly, crawl inside of there if you wanted to, or just mill down and poke your head in,” said Havoc of the space. “It’s like you’re poking your head into a tiny gallery that’s encased within a large gallery.”
(Courtesy McKay Lenker Bayer) Approximately 300 people waited in line for Tiny Art Gallery’s new show “Me Paint Pretty” on Friday, Feb. 7, 2025.
Laura Hendricks is Tiny Art Show’s 24th solo exhibitor. Her show “Me Paint Pretty” features a series of “other worlds” painted on two-dimensional surfaces made to look like folded paper.
With muraled walls handpainted with soft, cottonlike clouds and a (slightly) larger piece reminiscent of Yellowstone National Park’s thermal pools, Laura made the small cloistered space her own, a project that took her several weeks to complete, she said.
“This experience was interesting, because it took the same amount of creative output,” said Laura of her exhibit, which is on display until Feb. 22. “It [felt] like I just tackled a huge thing, even though, physically, it’s tiny.”
Marin, who chose the fun-size art show for her and her daughter’s Galentine’s outing, said the experience is a way to get her daughter “immersed into art.”
“My girl, she loves tiny things,” Marina said. “This is just the perfect thing to … see what else she could do with tiny, little things. Instead of just playing with them, we can make art.”
“I love watching the little kids look at the art gallery,” Lenker Bayer said, recalling that kids would often dress up during her past tiny shows. “They feel big … It’s like [we’re] here to give them a space.”
(Shaylee Navarro | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tiny Art Gallery new exhibit, “Me Paint Pretty” on Friday, February 7, features 16 original paintings by Provo-based artist Laura Hendricks. The canvasses mimic folded paper and create “new worlds” inspired by thermal pools and mountain landscapes.
Jenni Pratt and her family joined the Tiny Art Gallery queue at its peak — as attendees curved around the upstairs bannister and braved the human-induced muggy heat. Just 15 minutes after their arrival, the opening’s hors d’oeuvres — inch-wide cheesecake slices — had run out.
“It’s very similar to … cute aggression,” said Jenni of her draw to miniature items. “It’s just so satisfying to see. I have no idea why.”
Parley Pratt, 13, shares his mother’s zeal for minute figures, having accumulated a set of 20 miniatures over the last couple of years. Around seven of the items, Parley said are souvenirs – his first being a baby pitcher from a family trip to Oregon.
(Shaylee Navarro | The Salt Lake Tribune) Alma Gallery on Provo's historic Center Street is home to the Tiny Art Gallery.
“It just became a thing,” said Jenni of her son’s collection. “Now, he looks for it.”
“So now you have a permanent spot here, huh?” Jenni Pratt later asked Lenker Bayer as she rang up her tiny purchase. “Before you would just go all over the place.”
Lenker Bayer said she had struggled with burnout from her tiny art exhibits in different locations before the COVID pandemic, which led to a four-year hiatus. Now, she wants to see what she can do.
“I’ve kind of leveled up,” Lenker Bayer said. “Having it in one place and getting to totally make [it] over … that is really appealing to me. It makes it feel like I have more creative control.”
