Ryan Hymas’s “Crusader” exhibition filled the exterior of the old pioneer home with found-object sculptures, paintings, and handmade signs, turning the abandoned house into an immersive gallery.
In 2024, Ryan Hymas helped put Santaquin on the map. The art map. The artist, 11 years sober, transformed a late-19th-century pioneer dwelling into an art extravaganza inside and out. When he first began renting the house on Main Street, it was falling apart and full of cobwebs. His intention was simple: fill its rooms with bold, alternative abstract works. What started as a single exhibition soon grew into a long-term project, encouraged by the homeowners themselves.
Every wall and corner told a story. Sculptures and assemblages built from salvaged objects—many gathered from the battered barn behind the house—animated the space. A wood frame made by the owner’s grandfather was refurbished to hold a vintage aerial photograph of the property and surrounding neighborhood, a gesture that wove the home’s history into its new artistic life. For months, the once-forgotten structure became a beacon of eccentric color and conversation, drawing hundreds of visitors and even a buyer from Germany. (See an article from the Daily Herald here).
Today, little of that exuberance remains. The house sits stripped bare with nothing in the yard but a realtor’s for-sale sign.
Assemblage sculptures outside the abandoned Main Street house, created from found materials by artist Ryan Hymas as part of his art exhibition.
The former Robbins family home on Main Street, once transformed by artist Ryan Hymas into a lively art gallery, now sits vacant with a “For Sale” sign out front.
In 1851, Mormons from nearby Payson, led by Benjamin F. Johnson, settled Santaquin. They originally called it Summit Creek for its location on the ridge that separates Utah and Juab counties. The settlers escaped the violence of the 1856 Walker War when Ute chief Guffich intervened on their behalf. As thanks, he asked the town be named after his son, Santaquin.
Reference to this history can be found on the south side of the Chieftain Museum, which was built in 1903 as a school for the town, which turned it into a museum in 1990. Kyle and Lena Vincent helped the town create the mural in May of 2024, during the annual Santaquin Art Festival.
A mural on the Chieftain Museum depicts Chief Santaquin of the Ute people and Mormon settler Benjamin F. Johnson, the town’s founder, with Mount Nebo rising in the background.
A mural in Centennial Park, Santaquin shows a young girl biting into a peach, a nod to Santaquin’s orchard heritage and its annual Orchard Days festival.
It wasn’t their first mural. That’s in Centennial Park, where in 2021, Kyle Vincent directed a group of young artists to create a mural celebrating Santaquin’s long-standing reputation as a fruit-growing town and its signature festival, Orchard Days.
Santaquin is no longer just a rural island at the southern end of Utah County. Commercial development clusters around the I-15 exit and the town increasingly serves as a sleeper community for the burgeoning Provo–Orem metropolitan area. With each decade of the 21st century, the population has doubled, reaching 13,725 by the 2020 census, and its demographics have changed as well. Now more than 13% of the population is Latino or Hispanic, a shift reflected in the mural Vincent helped create on the side of Ivanov’s Market. “Bienvenidos!” it says, to Santaquin, “a breath of fresh air. “
From Hymas’s fleeting gallery in an old pioneer home, now surrounded by construction cones and a newly paved Main Street, to murals that honor orchards, founders, and cultural diversity, art has become a way for the town to see itself anew. These projects remind residents that even as landscapes shift—farmland giving way to subdivisions, small town merging into metro area—Santaquin’s story is still being written on its walls.
The “Bienvenidos Santaquin” mural, created by Kyle Vincent and students in 2022, reflects the town’s changing demographics and welcomes visitors with colorful local imagery.
Ryan Hymas still lives in Santaquin, with his wife and eight children. His newest work will be on exhibit October 3rd, 2025, at the Provo Community Congregational United Church of Christ in Provo, 175 north University Ave, 6-9 pm.
UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Categories: Art Lake City | In Plain Site | Visual Arts
What a neatly written, truly terrific little story to come across on a lazy afternoon. Complete with a map! It’s nice to see 15 Bytes cruise outside the bounds of Salt Lake City, and come up with something so well worth doing — in Provo by a Santaquin artist.