With our In Plain Site byline we feature publicly viewable art, both official and street art, throughout the state of Utah.
There’s a particular pleasure in noticing something small on a walk you’ve taken a hundred times — a door where there wasn’t one, a sculpture tucked into some bushes, a box of books where where before there was just a hedge. Part of the joy comes from what […]
That it was installed during the Cold War didn’t help. Neither did the color. Or the reaction by the general Utah public to abstract art. When this sculpture was first erected in 1982, some saw in the sculpture a hammer and sickle. Anchoring the entrance plaza of what […]
When the Southern Utah Museum of Art opened in Cedar City in 2016, the sculpture court east of the building was more promise than reality. During the summer, a single bronze figure—Jane DeDecker’s “The Sower”—stood alone in a field of gravel, an apt symbol for a collection that […]
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 […]
The Salt Lake City Arts Council has thrown down the gauntlet. They say that at nearly 2,000 feet, Strut is the longest continuous public artwork in Utah. The piece by Seattle-based duo Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan (Haddad|Drugan) runs along the south side of the 400 South […]
In 2001, as the University of Utah prepared the George S. Eccles Legacy Bridge for its Olympic debut, a copper skier statue called “Go for the Gold” went in near the bridge’s west stairwell—donated, not commissioned, by private donors. At the time, a university representative told the Daily […]
Few people stop at Cisco, Utah. Cyclists pedaling the long haul from Moab to Loma, Colorado pass through it. River runners cut straight across it on their way to the Cisco boat launch to start the three-to-four day float back to Moab. In its heyday, near the turn […]
For all its cranes, new apartments, and redevelopment buzz, the Granary District has always been a place of odds and ends: empty lots the size of moonscapes, century-old warehouses slouching against cinderblock additions, and industrial streets that still bear the ghosts of rail lines. It’s a neighborhood defined […]
Cedar City was always an improbable place. If it hadn’t been for the iron ore deposits in the hills nearby—deposits that Brigham Young wanted to exploit for the fledgling Utah Territory—Mormon settlers might never have come to this particular stretch of the high desert at all. As recent […]
Sometimes your neighbor is just lazy. Halloween ends, the pumpkins collapse, and a plastic skeleton is forgotten in the yard. But take a closer look, because sometimes something else may be going on. In the Liberty Wells neighborhood of Salt Lake City, a skeleton family has settled into […]
Park City’s public art program started with an accounting error. David Chaplin was going through the books of the Park City Arts Foundation when he came across a felicitous accounting error. Chaplin, an avid skier, professional artist and instructor at the high school and college level, had moved […]
For more than two decades, 15 Bytes has been documenting the artworks that shape Utah’s public landscape—sometimes formally commissioned, sometimes improvised or unsanctioned, often overlooked. From bronze monuments anchoring small towns to wheat-paste experiments in alleyways; from full-scale murals wrapping warehouse walls to whimsical objects that quietly appear […]
Sugar House has the name, but it’s West Jordan where they actually grew the sugar beets. In the early days of the Salt Lake Valley, sugar was an expensive import and the pioneers sought a local solution. Under the direction of Brigham Young, the area now known as […]
We snapped these images before the last leaves came down. Titled “Victoriam,” this 70-foot mural by Salt Lake City artist Chuck Berrett spans nearly 2,000 square feet, transforming the façade of a former 1968 medical office building into a sweeping field of botanical movement and layered color. The […]
Over the summer of 2025, the Ballpark neighborhood of Salt Lake City has become an open-air gallery, thanks to the Ballpark Mural Program—a creative initiative that brought ten new murals to walls across the district. “The Ballpark mural program has turned the Ballpark neighborhood into an open-air gallery,” […]
In the evolving landscape of Salt Lake City’s Granary District, where brick warehouses mingle with new creative spaces, one figure has come to symbolize the neighborhood’s spirit of reinvention: Hoodah, a towering, hand-built wooden troll who watches over the streets from his perch near 400 West and 700 […]
Every Labor Day weekend, the streets of Payson fill with the smell of fried onions, the sound of marching bands, and the bustle of carnival rides. Onion Days has been the town’s signature celebration since 1925, when Payson’s farmers were famed for the onions they grew in the […]
Two striking new murals rise up along the sides of a parking garage in South Salt Lake’s rapidly changing downtown. Unveiled as part of the 2025 edition of South Salt Lake’s Mural Fest, the works are the result of a long-awaited collaboration between Dutch artist Marcus Debie, known […]
Best known for his colorful, expressive murals across Utah, Matt Monsoon takes a leap into three-dimensional work with his new public sculpture “What We Build Together,” now installed in the heart of Salt Lake City’s Fairpark neighborhood. Commissioned through the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Public Art Program, […]
