Defining America never once crossed Brad Slaugh's mind while painting "Cheese," a reproduction of his ex-wife's Utah elementary class photo.

"That's a pretty paralyzing thought, actually," said Slaugh, 43, who earned his MFA in art at Boston University in 1995 before returning to his native Salt Lake City.

But if his 1999 "Cheese" -- along with three other paintings he completed recently -- reflects the ever-changing nature of what we mean when we say "American," Slaugh said he'll take the compliment.

Heather Ferrell, Salt Lake Art Center executive director, and Jay Heuman, the center's curator of exhibitions, certainly meant it as such. The curators selected the Utah artist's work, along with that of 12 other contemporary artists from across the nation, for the center's "All American: Defining Ourselves in a Time of Change." In true American style, the exhibition opened July 1 with a free community barbecue. The show will remain on display -- sans ribs -- through October.

Heuman, in an essay accompanying the exhibition, wrote that Slaugh's technique of "blind contour" painting, which prohibits artists from looking at what they draw, "results in a disquieting distortion, as if our perceptions have been warped by memory or personal experiences."

That's but one way of looking at Slaugh's paintings, of course. The rest of the exhibition, to borrow a word from Slaugh, is almost paralyzing in the sheer number of ideas it ponders, provokes and, yes, even defines, through paint, sculpture, installation, found objects and photography. The collection works to confront the vexing question of our national identity: What does it mean to be American?

The exhibition's largest piece, Scott Grieger's "United States of Anxiety," originated from a smaller, identical work the Venice, Calif.-based artist created in 1996, the year of Al Qaeda's attack on Saudi Arabia's Khobar Towers and one year after Timothy McVeigh's bombing of Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. With its title rendered in white letters on a black United States, Grieger communicates a stark portrait of national fear. "The choice of black and white is no mistake," Heuman said.

Robert Reynolds, also of Los Angeles, plays with similar political themes. Hinting broadly at our growing national debt to China, among other things, his sculpture "W/M" adorns the Washington Monument with Chinese characters. Another work, "NAFTA," toys with the unexpected consequences of global trade and cultural exchange in the cereal aisle of your local supermarket. The punch line of the work, found on the third shelf, is too tantalizing to reveal.

Yet another American cultural touchstone, obsession with lawn care, gets a contextual shift with Patrick Lichty's installation "Suburban Meditation," where mowing the lawn becomes a religious experience with polyphonic chants from Buddhist monks as a soundtrack.

Ferrell and Heuman also selected less politicized artworks, as well, dealing with such themes as the American work ethic, race, environment and politics. Artist Tracy Linder, who lives in the small town of Molt, Mont., suspends farmers' gloves worn black and full of holes in homage to farm life, while beeswax molded into shovels hangs next to soiled Carhartt work suits.

One enduring paradox Ferrell wanted the exhibition to explore was the American relationship to the environment, as the country's doctrines of westward expansion and Manifest Destiny called for an American taming of the wilderness. That ethic has since turned to preservation and, in some cases, imitation.

Photographer Stephen B. Smith captures all that, plus the current housing crisis, in images of Utah housing developments that attempt to re-create natural rock formations even as they impose on nature. One captures a house in Lehi that was foreclosed on before it could even be completed.

If race is a minefield few Americans want to walk, that's one that artist Larry McNeil, a member of Alaska's Tlingit Nation, confronts in three works mixing image and text that explore his American Indian identity. Two recount his family's hardships under the Anglo thumb while the last, "In The True Spirit of White Man," switches roles with the oppressor: "In the true spirit of the white man, I stole this car in my search for America. Just call it manifested destiny. I asked the owner to take my picture in front of his car before I took it and assured him it was God's will that I take his car," McNeil wrote.

Ferrell and Heuman curated the exhibition with dialogue in mind, and they hope that at least one piece will speaks to everyone who walks through the show. "Even then, we're just scratching the surface," Heuman said.

Slaugh said the exhibition's theme has him thinking even months after the center contacted him about including his work.

"In Boston, I was the vanilla white guy from Nowhere, America," said Slaugh, who manages Salt Lake City's Poor Yorick art studios and teaches art locally. "Then when I looked through my own and others' family photos I realized my experience -- who I am and where I'm from -- seemed as legitimate as anyone's. The sheer unsexiness of it makes you step back and think it's much more real than if I tried to paint some exotic or foreign thing."