Features on public art published in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine.
“It looks like an airplane from here,” one of our visitors from out of town says as we approach the roundabout in our car. (The visitor has actually flown planes.) “It looks like the back of a penguin,” says his wife. “And look, there’s a setting sun on […]
With much of the state taking fall breaks, Moab will be a prime destination this October. It’s a playground boom town always flush with recreators of all sorts: bikers, hikers, rafters, four wheelers. But you can only do those activities for so long before the gas tank goes […]
The Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center (138 W Broadway, Salt Lake City) celebrated its 25th anniversary this week with the unveiling of a new mural by Salt Lake City artist Lenka Konopasek. The Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, known locally as “The Rose,” opened in the summer of […]
Not all walls are created equal. Ask any mural artist. Some are relatively smooth, others worn rough with age. Some are broad and accessible. Others are tall or out-of-reach. Trent Call has painted just about every type. His works have been going up on walls in the Salt […]
Kalani Tonga is embracing her “hafekasi weirdness” in Midvale. Originally from Allen, TX, Tukuafu now calls Midvale home and was able to celebrate her personal heritage with her neighbors as part of the Midvale Main Street Mural Festival. Tonga’s father is from Tonga and her mother’s family has […]
In Crockett Johnson’s classic children’s book (which has been adapted for the screen), a young boy named Harold wields a magic purple crayon that brings to life the world of his imagination. With it, he draws animals or houses or trees, or simply drags it along by his […]
Most of the murals going up around town are outside (and one wonders what their condition will be in a decade or so), but get out of your car and step inside and you’ll find large works going up in more climate-controlled settings. One of the newest is […]
Her nom de plume should be your first hint that something a bit psychedelic is going on. Atentatmente una fresa (Mindfully a strawberry) is Mexican artist Aline Herrera’s professional moniker. It sounds a bit like a late ’60s psych band. Under it, she has decorated football equipment, musical […]
Whether by accident or by design, the 2022 iteration of South Salt Lake’s The Mural Fest has created a metaphorical demarcation line for the ancestral lands of the Ute and the Shoshone: it’s Haven Ave. in South Salt Lake. On the south side of the street, Rafael Blanco […]
Rian Kasner says that with their new mural, painted on the south side of Apex Brewing in South Salt Lake, they were inspired by how people would feel when they read the words, “Darling, you are a work of art.” The one-story mural features stenciled images of five […]
Against a two-storey, rainbow colored-background, the profile of a Native American in a feathered headdress stares northward. To the right is the text of a Ute prayer: Earth teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep with rain. The mural, located on AMI Roofing’s south wall, was […]
Making a shy curtsy — like a Degas ballerina — the bus stop/shelter at the southeast corner of 2505 East Parleys Way is an appropriate welcome and nod of approval for the performance of a new type of building: one that is more than sustainable. This building’s self-image […]
We’re frequently posting news on murals, street art and public art projects in the Salt Lake City area — capitol city, location of our headquarters and all that. But other municipalities in Utah are not willing to sit idly by while SLC paints its walls. Certainly not Provo, […]
Over the past ten years Gary Swanson has completed a couple dozen interior and exterior murals in the Salt Lake City area, including Gallenson’s Gun Shop, Fat Cats Bowling, Purgatory Bar and Settebello Pizzeria. His latest mural is on the north side of Caputo’s Market & Deli […]
Chris Peterson has a studio in Holladay, but his mural practice has taken him all across the Salt Lake Valley and further afield in the American West. As part of Visit Salt Lake’s “West of Conventional” campaign, Peterson recently completed a mural on the east side of the […]
As part of their West of Conventional Mural project Visit Salt Lake is unveiling ten new murals created across the Salt Lake Valley. The largest is probably Bill Louis’ mural on the south wall of the Hobby Lobby at Valley Fair Mall in West Valley City (3601 South […]
For much of the year, the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy (9575 S State State) has served as a vaccine center in the fight against COVID-19. A new mural on the outside of the building’s entrance serves as another sort of community builder. Traci O’Very Covey and […]
