This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

It takes a whirlwind, and Shawn Rossiter is one. Catch him at any given moment, and Rossiter is spinning fast and furious, north, south, east and west.

Two Saturdays ago you would have found him outside his house at 1783 S. 1300 East, advertising a "guerrilla art" sale he cooked up a couple of days earlier. Head downtown on a Friday night and you'll find a swarm of gallery strollers following him as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

"Shawn is like a rock star," says Salt Lake painter Trent Alvey.

"My fan base is small," Rossiter counters, laughing.

But loyal, says Alvey.

That's because Rossiter "has been a catalyst for art and artists," the driving force behind projects that have brought together members of the visual-arts community in unprecedented, effective and binding ways, says Ruth Lubbers of Art Access.

Rossiter, who is LDS and originally from Connecticut, blew into Utah in 1994 for a master's program in comparative literature at BYU. Having finished all his coursework and short only of writing his thesis, he quit suddenly to start painting.

For several years Rossiter worked in Salt Lake in solitude, painting abstracts on large pieces of particle board.

"Becoming an artist is like taking your vows to enter the priesthood," Rossiter says of the isolation. He wondered how to connect with others who had taken the same vows.

In 2001, he handed out leaflets at the Sugar House Arts festival, inviting other artists to meet and talk. Soon he and two others - Nancy Thunell, formerly of Phillips Gallery, and art collector Aaron Moffett - founded the nonprofit organization Artists of Utah.

Artists of Utah (http://www.artistsofutah.org) is a hub and database for the work of artists across the state and also the site of a monthly e-zine called "15bytes" (http://www.15bytes.com).

AOU provides a comprehensive online database of artists by genre, displays digital images of their work and provides hyperlinks to their sites. Rossiter edits "15bytes," which provides up-to-date visual art news, exhibition reviews and tools to subscribers about topics that range from finding gallery space to understanding laws governing taxes on artists' work.

When Rossiter started the sites, he had zero online experience. "I just faked it at first," he says. He relied on a wide range of dedicated volunteers to help the sites get off the ground.

Lubbers says "15bytes" has given local artists an outlet for writing as well as a place to showcase work. "We all love it."

Today AOU lists more than 375 artists, who each pay a one-time fee of $15 to be listed.

To keep "15 bytes" going, Rossiter relies largely on individual donations, though the site also offers advertising opportunities.

Lubbers has often found it difficult to feed his family on the salary he makes as the head of AOU and "15bytes." Once, he donned "a bum's clothes" and stood on a street corner with a cardboard sign that read: "Will Edit E-zine for Food." Then, in 2004, when his first child was 1, he quit the organization and was "blown away" by the community's response, a massive e-mail campaign that raised enough to keep the sites barely in the black.

"Here's all these starving artists, and they're sending me a hundred bucks to keep the organization going," Rossiter marvels.

Lubbers says the community has recognized that "what Shawn is doing is completely different." He's created "a slice of life of contemporary Utah art."

In 2007, Artists of Utah received a much-needed grant from the Doctorow Foundation. Still, the issue of sustained funding lingers.

"There's that old joke," Rossiter says, "that when artists get together they talk about money, and when bankers get together they talk about art."

Recently, Rossiter, whose wife is a social worker, has been picking up contract work designing commercial Web sites.

"If Shawn went away right now," says Alvey, the artist community "would hear a huge sucking sound." Alvey says she and many others just hope theynever have to hear it.

In touch with AOU

For more information about 15bytes.com or artistsofutah.org, e-mail Shawn Rossiter at artistsofutah@netzero.net

Referring to the financial struggles that come with artistic pursuits