SALT LAKE CITY NAMES JOEL LONG ITS FIRST POET LAUREATE
Salt Lake City has named Joel Long its first Poet Laureate, establishing a new civic position intended to bring poetry into public spaces and city events. Long, selected through a competitive review by literary professionals, educators and community representatives, will serve a three-year term through June 2029.
Long is hardly new to the city’s literary scene. A poet, educator, editor and organizer, he has been active in Utah literary circles for more than four decades. He has taught English and creative writing at Rowland Hall since 2004 and is the author of seven books, including five poetry collections. His newest, *Watershed*, was published this year. Previous honors include the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Award for Literary Arts in 2009.
For many Salt Lake writers, however, Long may be best known for his work behind the scenes. From 2002 to 2023, he served as president of the City Art Reading Series, where he organized nearly 600 readings featuring local and nationally recognized writers. “Salt Lake City has a tremendous wealth of poets to celebrate,” Long said in announcing his appointment, adding that he hopes to reach both those who already love poetry and those who haven’t discovered it yet.
The city launched the Poet Laureate program this spring, requiring applicants to be Salt Lake City residents with demonstrated records both as practicing poets and in community engagement. As laureate, Long will write annual civic poems, participate in city and community events, develop public programming and offer readings throughout the city’s seven council districts. He will also develop a signature project connecting poetry with community life.
THE WHALE GETS A NEW SKIN
Four years after surfacing in the middle of a 9th & 9th roundabout, Salt Lake City’s most recognizable whale has a new skin. Jiyoun Lee-Lodge has completed “Open Your Eyes,” a new mural covering Stephen Kesler’s 23-foot “Out of the Blue” sculpture at 900 South and 1100 East. It replaces Mike Murdock’s “Point of Reference,” the brightly colored mural that has covered the whale since its installation in 2022.
The change is part of the artwork’s original conception. Kesler’s sculpture is permanent, but its surface was intended to provide a changing canvas, with a new mural commissioned every three to five years. Murdock’s inaugural design took its palette from the sunrises and sunsets visible from the 9th & 9th neighborhood. Lee-Lodge turns the whale toward another Utah landscape: Great Salt Lake.
Her “Open Your Eyes” wraps the sculpture in gradients of pink and blue, flowing waves and clusters of brightly colored dots. Great Salt Lake, Utah’s expansive skies and the movement of water all informed the design, which changes as viewers move around the whale. And there’s a detail drivers passing through the roundabout might miss: one of the whale’s eyes is open while the other is closed, giving the mural its title.
Lee-Lodge, a Korean-born artist who spent more than a decade in New York before relocating to Utah, works across painting, drawing, installation and public art. Her ongoing *Waterman* series explores resilience, identity and transition through what she calls “inside-out portraits.” Her previous public commissions include “The Arrival” in Queens, New York, and “The Crossing” at Salt Lake City’s 600 South TRAX station.
Before choosing a new artist for the whale, Salt Lake City’s Public Art Program asked residents what the sculpture and its neighborhood meant to them, receiving responses from more than 1,700 people. Thirty-five artists responded to the subsequent call; four finalists developed proposals for the Salt Lake Art Design Board and neighborhood stakeholders. Lee-Lodge’s design was the unanimous choice.
The repainting marks an interesting milestone for an artwork that has taken on a cultural life considerably larger than its traffic-circle footprint. The city and 9th & 9th Business District will celebrate the completed “Open Your Eyes” with Whale Fest on October 3, with music, vendors, a parade and—appropriately enough—a whale-call contest.
9/7 SLTRIB: THIS ACCLAIMED UTAH ARTIST PAINTS THE AMERICAN WEST. EVERY YEAR, HE RETURNS TO THESE CAROUSEL HORSES.
Ron Larson has spent a lifetime painting the vast American West on oversized canvases large enough to swallow a living room wall.
Yet every year, he gladly saddles up for one of his humblest gigs: touching up the carousel at St. George’s Town Square Park.
“It’s kind of a love-hate relationship,” Larson said at his Ivins studio. “It’s a pain in the butt, but I view it as a community service. I want the horses on the ride to look good.”
An acclaimed oil painter and watercolorist, Larson is a member of the prestigious National Watercolor Society. His renowned redrock landscapes are featured at the University of Utah and Utah Tech University, as well as private collections as far away as Finland and Germany. A frequent award-winner, he regularly distinguishes himself at art festivals and plein air invitationals across the West.
8/31 KUER: UNIVERSITY OF UTAH RESEARCHERS LOOK FOR DOWNWINDER RADIATION IN SURVIVORS’ BODIES
Salt Lake City visual artist Cara Despain’s work over the past several years has focused on the Cold War — specifically the nuclear weapons development and testing of that era. Think dramatic depictions of mushroom clouds after a nuclear explosion in stark black and white or cloaked in neon. It hasn’t been out of curiosity. For her, the connection is personal.
Despain’s mom Bonnie grew up in the southern Utah town of Newcastle, about 130 miles east of the Nevada Test Site where the government conducted 100 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the years after World War II. People exposed to that radiation are known as downwinders.
Her mom didn’t have many memories of the testing itself and always described a “quaint, bucolic rural life” in her hometown.
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: Mixed Media
