{"id":100962,"date":"2026-01-10T08:23:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T15:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=100962"},"modified":"2026-01-16T11:11:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T18:11:28","slug":"from-accounting-error-to-art-legacy-how-public-art-took-root-in-park-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/from-accounting-error-to-art-legacy-how-public-art-took-root-in-park-city\/","title":{"rendered":"From Accounting Error to Art Legacy: How Public Art Took Root in Park City"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Park City\u2019s public art program started with an accounting error.<\/h4>\n

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 to park city in 1963, participated in the city\u2019s first art exhibitions and helped found the Park City Arts Foundation, which launched the Park City Arts Festival in 1970. The festival began as an informal affair\u2014a group of invited Utah artists who y set up shop along the sidewalks of Main Street because they weren\u2019t allowed to block the road. By 1975, when the Chamber of Commerce took over, the festival had grown to 240 artists and resort parking lots were filled with what organizers estimated as 50,000 visitors. With the chamber of commerce running things, the foundation lost its purpose and slowly faded away. Almost a decade later, Chaplin discovered they still had a bank account. And it had money in it: $2,000.<\/h4>\n

That\u2019s when the foundation decided to commission the town\u2019s first public art piece. They worked\u00a0 with City Councilwoman Tina Lewis, who was then working to transform the former Miner\u2019s Hospital into the city library. (Built in 1904 with miner-funded contributions and originally located near Thayne’s Canyon, the hospital closed in the 1950s, became a hostel and bar for a time and then when it faced demolition in the 1970s, locals paid to have it moved to its current location in the city park. It served as the town’s library until 1993, when the former high school took over that role. It now serves as a community center). Once they chose an appropriate spot, Chaplin contacted James McBeth, a professor of art at Weber State whom Chaplin had known since their college days at the University of Utah. \u201cI thought there couldn\u2019t be a better sculptor whose work we could afford,\u201d Chaplin told The Park Record at the time (1984, Nov. 1, p. 22).<\/h4>\n

McBeth\u2019s sculpture is carved from three large sheets of quarter-inch burnished stainless steel, rising from the ground in a loose cluster of tall, tapering forms. At first glance, the shapes read like stylized trees or aspens\u2014an abstract stand echoing the surrounding landscape. But cut into the metal are other familiar motifs: sinuous, wavy lines that suggest ski runs, and angular silhouettes reminiscent of buildings, a subtle acknowledgment of human presence in a place defined by nature. Near the top of one panel, McBeth embedded a highly polished metal disc, reflective enough to catch the sky, snow, and the viewer\u2019s own image, a literal mirror meant to \u201creflect the people themselves,\u201d as he explained at the time.<\/h4>\n