The Dinwoodey mural, painted by Paul Fischer and Gyll Huff in 1977, is located at 37 W. 100 South in Salt Lake City. Image by Shawn Rossiter.

When someone writes the history of Utah’s modern mural scene—not the indoor ones of the WPA era and the early Latter-day Saint temples; nor the ancient one of pecked and painted sandstone; but the mural scene of latex paint and aerosol cans—they’ll want to devote at least an introduction, if not a first chapter, to the state’s early street murals—those of the late 20th century, predecessors to the hundreds of murals that now, however ephemerally, decorate our built environments.

Detail of Ccopacatty’ss mural on Pierpont, shot by Shalee Cooper in 2012.

They might mention Peruko Ccopacatty, the Peruvian artist who focused Salt Lake City’s eyes on the newly developed Artspace project at Pierpont Avenue. When Artspace was still young, nascent really, years before it became a 21st-century real estate behemoth, it had modest goals: transform the Eccles-Browning Warehouse near Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Park into an affordable live/work space for artists. It took almost four years from conception until the first artists moved in in 1984. Two years later, as the building was becoming a vibrant hub of creativity in the city center, Artspace Inc. commissioned Ccopacatty, recently relocated from the Andes to Rhode Island, to paint a mural on the warehouse’s street-facing wall. Ccopacatty’s 64-by-30-foot mural was the first formally commissioned mural in the area. Influenced by classic Mexican muralists, it honored laborers and artisans as community builders, featuring three figures working with ceramic and metal in a manner emblematic of how the artist would describe all his work, including large metal sculptures and painted murals: “monumental, heroic humanity, gathering together in great energy, in a particular moment called art or prophesy.” Despite physical challenges at the site, Ccopacatty completed the mural in 30 days. For years, his mural did more work than any billboard could to announce the creative district near Pioneer Park. Like a magnet, it drew Gallery Strollers during that organization’s glory days, when one could actually walk from one venue to the next. Artspace outlasted its original lease at Pierpont, but when the family that owned the warehouse sold the property to an out-of-state investment firm, the creative hub’s days were numbered. As was its mural. By 2015, as rents increased, the artists and shops began leaving. In 2018, when a new, eight-story apartment complex began going up on the east side of the warehouse, Ccopacatty’s mural vanished as well (see Ellen Fagg Weist’s Salt Lake Tribune article)

Or they might mention the short-lived City Walls program, begun in 1977 during the administration of Salt Lake City mayor Ted Wilson.  A partnership between Salt Lake City’s Arts Council and the Chamber of Commerce, with funding from the Utah Arts Council, the program functioned similarly to the many mural fests of our time: business owners provided the walls while the city commissioned the artists to create the works. The first work was completed in 1977 when Paul Fischer and Gyll Huff received $4,000 to paint the stylized sandstone arch you can still see on the Dinwoodey Building (37 W. 100 South) in what was then a newly-created pocket park. A year later, Stan McBride was commissioned to create a mural on the side of the Type-A-Line building on the corner of 200 South and 200 East. In 1964, just as hard edge painting was poised to take over the Los Angeles art world (see our article here), Stan McBride left his native California to study art at BYU, where under the tutelage of design professor Alex Darais, he arrived at the same place. During the 1970s, he experienced early success with his hard edge style, including an Award of Merit at the Utah Statewide Annual in 1972, followed by his City Wall commission in 1978. Painted on a white background, the 1,920-square-foot mural featured gray squares with a twisting ribbon of yellows and blues that seemed to fold over on itself. Driving to town along 200 South, you couldn’t miss it (in the same way it’s hard to miss the “Ave Maria” mural on the side of Guthrie’s today). McBride’s mural may have been the most viewed piece of art in the state at the time; which is why McBride’s friends called him up in 1987 when someone started painting the background of the mural orange. Randy Barton had taken over the property to open a new restaurant (Stonecutter) and wanted to announce the shift in management with a color scheme that would match the restaurant. When McBride showed up to see what was happening, Barton explained that he had tried to locate the artist but had been unsuccessful. Ultimately, McBride and Barton worked together to restore the mural, with McBride repainting it to incorporate the orange tones while maintaining the integrity of his original design (see the Salt Lake Tribune article here). It remained there for two more decades, even after the restaurant closed and Gallenson’s Gun Shop took over. By the time Ben Weimeyer and friends convinced Gallenson’s to let them paint a new mural on the wall, McBride’s mural had faded under the full-sun exposure. Weimeyer’s mural has been covered up as well, at least visually, by the generic apartment building that recently went up in the parking lot, though you’ll still find his work on Gallenson’s 200 South facade, as well as the alleyway between Gallenson’s and FICE, likely the densest collection of street art in the state.

Stan McBride’s original Type-A-Line mural, left, and the 1988 repainted version. Images courtesy of the artist.

Lest we forget there is life (and artistic life) outside of Salt Lake City, our imagined historian will want also to mention the phantom muralist of northern Utah. Jason Nessen, a self-taught artist who has put his hometown of Tremonton on the mural map with close to a dozen large-scale works, recounted his memories of the phantom muralist for an article in Wasatch View magazine (2015).  He’s an artist Nessen knows mostly by stories (though he does have a recollection, from when he was about age ten, of seeing him paint), and the ghost murals that still remain in Tremonton, Garland and other towns in Box Elder and Cache counties. Rumors abound. It was the 1970s. He was a hippie and made his brushes from his own hair. He liked to paint scenes of the Tetons, so was from Wyoming. He painted on the Gossner Cheese factory in Logan, so was a student at Utah State University. The mystery will likely abide, even if the murals may not. Nessen painted over one of the phantom muralist’s works for one of his own commissions. Others remain, and you may find them if you start looking, but time and the Utah weather have not been kind to them.

Mural by the phantom muralist in Tremonton, Utah. Image by Shawn Rossiter.

Mural by the phantom muralist on the back side of Bill’s Fix It Shop at 2 West 200 South in Garland, Utah. At one time, the entire building was covered in a mural. Image by Shawn Rossiter.

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.