Salt Lake City visual artist Cara Despain’s work over the past several years has focused on the Cold War — specifically the nuclear weapons development and testing of that era. Think dramatic depictions of mushroom clouds after a nuclear explosion in stark black and white or cloaked in neon. It hasn’t been out of curiosity. For her, the connection is personal.
Despain’s mom Bonnie grew up in the southern Utah town of Newcastle, about 130 miles east of the Nevada Test Site where the government conducted 100 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the years after World War II. People exposed to that radiation are known as downwinders.
Her mom didn’t have many memories of the testing itself and always described a “quaint, bucolic rural life” in her hometown…