Seven Canyons Fountain, dedicated in 1993, was originally designed with flowing water but is now dry. Stephen Goldsmith is in the process of helping the city redesign the project. Image by Steve Coray.

When Salt Lake City’s visionary art czar Stephen A. Goldsmith decamped for Oregon in 2019, he left some stuff behind – like several of his own works at Phillips Gallery and many entrancing water projects in public spaces and private homes.

Now, the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Public Art Program has convinced Goldsmith to return to his hometown (if only temporarily and intermittently) for a new challenge—to reimagine the landmark Seven Canyons Fountain in Liberty Park, now tentatively called Seven Canyons Refuge. A member of the original design team some 30 years ago, Goldsmith will now collaborate with ArcSitio, a landscape architecture firm, to transform the fountain into a new artwork that acknowledges its past while morphing into something new.

“Along with others on the design team, I’m reshaping the ways people witness their engagement with the water of our seven canyons, the Jordan River, and other tributaries of the Great Salt Lake,” Goldsmith explains. The new iteration will also include, he says, “a representation of other water bodies, including Hot Springs Lake and Warm Springs, and mark deep connections to the origin stories of the valley’s first people.”

Goldsmith is best known in Utah for founding the nonprofit Artspace (1987) which he directed for 20 years. Located on Pierpont Avenue, it offered much-needed live/work space for artists—sometimes with a garden plot out back. (The Pierpont Project that preceded Artspace, in 1980, housed nonprofits and galleries.) Always hands-on, Goldsmith lived at Artspace himself and later developed the organization’s The Rubber Company, The Bridge Projects and City Center spaces.

In 1994-95 Goldsmith helped redesign City Creek Park, in downtown Salt Lake City, to resurface a half-mile of creek connecting Memory Grove and the upper wilderness of City Creek Canyon with the Salt Lake business district through a new urban park. Image by Steve Coray.

“River Words” in Salt Lake City’s Gallivan Plaza was designed by Goldsmith and features a poem by Mark Strand. Image by Steve Coray.

Following Artspace, Goldsmith served under Mayor Rocky Anderson as Planning Director for Salt Lake City (the first artist in a major U.S. city to hold such a position) and later worked at the University of Utah as an Associate Professor with the College of Architecture and Planning and also was Director of the Center for the Living City. Goldsmith says he had “the privilege” of working on several water projects over the years, both public and private. These include City Creek Park (with Jan Streifel), Gallivan Plaza (with Mark Strand), Primary Children’s Medical Center, The General Engineering Building (formerly Phillips Pierpont Gallery) on Pierpont Avenue and The Salt Lake Community College’s South City campus. (The latter is well worth a visit—park in the rear lot, head for the back of the campus buildings. It’s awesome.)

When the Seven Canyons Fountain’s original design team (Goldsmith, Boyd Blackner Architects and the city’s landscape architect, John Swain) composed and built the project 30 years ago, they were inspired by the donor, philanthropist O.C. Tanner, who “wanted a playful place to celebrate the canyons,” Goldsmith says. The fountain was designed to celebrate the Salt Lake Valley’s waterways, with rock formations representing the Wasatch Front and streams mimicking City Creek, Red Butte, Emigration, Parleys, East Mill Creek, and Big and Little Cottonwood canyons. And it did become a playful place, with children and adults alike cooling off in the fountain’s waters during hot summer months. But fecal bacteria in the water was a constant concern and in 2017 the water was shut off. Due to budgetary concerns and in response to public input, Salt Lake City has decided to reimagine the public art piece, including its waterways.

Keeping true to Dr. Tanner’s original vision, the new team of designers, including ArcSito, Landscape Architects, are recalibrating what immersive experiences in the Seven Canyons Refuge might feel like, day and night, in all seasons. “As a refuge, it will be a place where people can explore their relationships with our sister species, especially birds and their songs,” Goldsmith says. “As a refuge, it will be a place to imagine different futures, celebrate a moment, and feel connected to our unique oasis on that piece of our Earth. “

Seven Canyons Fountain in Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park, February, 2025. Image by Steve Coray.

He says he is working with the “extraordinary craftspeople” at Metal Arts in Lehi to cast several new sculptures—”sculptures that will invite people to touch them, to listen with their eyes, hands, and ears. I’m creating spatial and contextual juxtapositions that propose questions about our relationships with the complex systems we live in, our personal, connected ecosystems.”

The team plans on redesigning the refuge’s waterways to adapt to new standards as well. “We’re also reshaping the actual plant landscape to keep it cool, inviting, resilient, and safe. We want to ensure that all the spaces are easily maintained, and accessible to all. Above all, we’re seeking to create a place of refuge for joy and wonder,” Goldsmith says.

For updates on this project and other work by the Public Art Program, follow Salt Lake City’s Public Art Program on Instagram. The Public Art Program is a service of the Salt Lake City Arts Council, a division of Salt Lake City’s Department of Economic Development.

Ann Poore

A graduate of the University of Utah, Ann Poore is a freelance writer and editor who spent most of her career at The Salt Lake Tribune. She was the 2018 recipient of the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Artist Award in the Literary Arts.