Katie Garner’s “Welcome to Springville” mural in progress, May, 2026.

Springville seems like it’s had an antipathy (or is it fear, or maybe indifference?) to murals, ever since they painted over the Gordon Cope mural in the 1940s. Home to the first and one of the biggest art museums in Utah, with sculptures installed all over town, Utah’s “art city” had, until just last year, no murals. This, almost a decade since murals began popping up in towns and cities across the state.

But they’re catching up, and doing so with some careful planning. “It’s about a lot more than murals,” says Springville Museum of Art director Emily Larsen.

The Art Loops, which launches June 8th with a free ribbon cutting celebration, is a new public art experience threading through Springville’s downtown—connecting more than 100 artworks and installations. New murals by Havoc Hendricks, Katie Garner, and Chuck Berrett are part of it. So is stained glass by Mark Bigelow, fire hydrant characters by Brooke Smart, interactive sidewalk art by Mike and Alma Loveland of Your Very Favorite, and sidewalk poetry woven into the pavement underfoot.

Wild Life mural by Bill Louis, 2026. Image courtesy of Springville Museum of Art.

Wild Life mural by Bill Louis, 2026. Image courtesy of Springville Museum of Art.

Visitors navigate the project through three color-coded walking loops: Red (The Scenic Route), Yellow (The Young at Heart), and Blue (The Highlights), each threading through different combinations of streets, neighborhoods, and green spaces. The routes mix permanent installations with temporary activations, so there’s reason to return. Maps are available at the Museum, Library, and Civic Center, or digitally at artloops.org.

The project’s centerpiece may be Festival Street, a new urban plaza on 200 South where a 20,000 square foot street mural now sprawls across the asphalt in bold geometric fields of red, green, blue, and yellow—hard-edged forms that ripple and curve across the intersection like something between a painting and a game board. The design, by landscape architects Io LandArch, was inspired by Donald P. Olsen’s “Chelsea VI,” a work in the Springville Museum’s permanent collection. Olsen was a Utah artist who helped introduce abstract expressionism and hard-edge painting to the state; here his visual language gets translated to a scale you can walk across. More than 200 community volunteers helped paint it under the direction of six artists over four days in late May.

Donald Olsen-inspired street mural at Festival Street. Image courtesy of Springville Museum of Art.

The Art Loops also reactivates Springville’s Statues to Live By program—the bronze sculptures placed around downtown in the 1990s and 2000s—folding them into a walking experience that connects them to newer commissions and to each other. In all, the project features work by more than 50 artists.

The Springville Museum of Art took over management of Springville’s public art program in 2022 and spent the last several years building out a master plan with Union Creative Agency and Io LandArch. Director Larsen has been direct about her ambitions since taking the helm in 2023: she wants Springville to be Art City in fact, not just in name. The Art Loops—extending the museum’s reach into the streets, storefronts, and sidewalks of downtown—is one answer to that.

The ribbon cutting is Monday, June 8th, 6–8 p.m. at Festival Street (200 South, Main Street to 100 East). Free and open to the public.

Rebecca Pletsch, “Origins of Hobble Creek,” 2025.

In Plain Site

With our In Plain Site byline we feature publicly viewable art, both official and street art, throughout the state of Utah.