{"id":102213,"date":"2026-03-21T11:46:42","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T18:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=102213"},"modified":"2026-05-31T08:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:52:17","slug":"cedar-city-a-wellspring-of-murals-and-public-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/cedar-city-a-wellspring-of-murals-and-public-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Cedar City: A Wellspring of Murals and Public Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cedar City was always an improbable place. If it hadn’t been for the iron ore deposits in the hills nearby\u2014deposits that Brigham Young wanted to exploit for the fledgling Utah Territory\u2014Mormon settlers might never have come to this particular stretch of the high desert at all. As recent reporting on the area’s dwindling aquifer makes plain, there is no natural water source here: the land has no river, no reservoir. Cedar Valley sits on a closed basin and depends entirely on wells drawing from groundwater that, for decades, has been going down faster than it can recharge.<\/h4>\n

The settlers came anyway, in November 1851, drawn by that promise of iron. They named the place after the juniper trees on the hillsides\u2014mistaking them for cedars\u2014and set about building a furnace. The Iron Mission, as it came to be known, was never much of a success. The ore was stubborn, skilled ironworkers were scarce, and floods repeatedly damaged the equipment. By the late 1850s the smelter was essentially abandoned.<\/h4>\n

But the settlement stayed. It grew first as an agricultural and ranching community and then was transformed when The Branch Normal School\u2014which would eventually become Southern Utah University\u2014arrived in 1897, making Cedar City a place people came to for education as well as land. The designation as a gateway to what would become Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Cedar Breaks National Monument brought visitors, and visitors brought the logic of tourism infrastructure: hotels, restaurants, and eventually, a sense of the city as a destination rather than merely a stop.<\/h4>\n

Then, in 1962, the Utah Shakespeare Festival was founded on the SUU campus. What had been a regional hub became a genuine cultural destination for the entire state. People drove hours to sit in an outdoor amphitheater in the high desert and watch Henry V. The festival gave Cedar City a self-image, a story it could tell about itself. The city leaned into it, calling itself “Festival City” and later “Festival City USA,” accumulating other annual events around the Shakespearean anchor.<\/h4>\n

It is that civic pride in culture\u2014combined with a wave of growth that has brought new residents, new businesses, and a younger generation of artists connected to the university\u2014that has produced Cedar City’s most recent and perhaps most visible creative development: a sprawling, organic, entirely walkable collection of public murals and sculptures that has been assembling across the downtown core and beyond.<\/h4>\n

None of it emerged from a single master plan. The collection has grown through an accumulation of decisions: a local winery commissioning a mural for its wall, a nonprofit arts center decorating its outdoor stage, a railroad centennial prompting a painted tribute, a Paiute artist rendering his people’s stories on the side of an outdoor goods store. It’s a reflection of a city still in the middle of figuring out what it is, and putting that process on its walls for anyone walking by to see.<\/h4>\n

The current concentration of public art in Cedar City is a relatively recent phenomenon, though its roots go back to 2019 when a statewide Spike 150 event\u2014celebrating 150 years since the driving of the transcontinental railroad’s golden spike\u2014brought new murals to several Utah communities. Cedar City’s downtown received two pieces from that effort, both by artist Katie Beckstead, that remain among the more historically resonant works in the collection.<\/h4>\n

What followed was partly pandemic-era momentum: artists with time, building owners with blank walls, and a community looking for something to take pride in while everything else was shut. Rian Kasner, then a senior at Southern Utah University who had stumbled into muralism after painting a weight room for a coach, emerged as a defining figure. Kasner’s work now appears on at least four surfaces in the city, each piece identifiable by its bold colors and confident line work.<\/h4>\n

The Cedar City Arts Council, the Johnson Center for Community Arts & Education, and the city’s tourism bureau have all played supporting roles\u2014cataloguing pieces, promoting the collection to visitors, and occasionally providing funding. But the scene remains genuinely decentralized. Significant work appears behind pawn shops and wineries as readily as in officially designated arts spaces. None of it requires a ticket or an appointment. All of it is free.<\/h4>\n

The murals documented below are all publicly viewable on foot, by bike, or by car, concentrated primarily along Center Street and 100 West in Historic Downtown, with additional pieces along the Coal Creek trail corridor to the north. Together they represent the current state of a collection that is still growing\u2014and that tells, in fragments and color, the story of a city that arrived by accident and decided to stay.<\/h4>\n
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The mural at Suds & Duds Laundromat at 696 W 200 North will probably be the first mural you’ll see if you enter town from the 200 North highway entrance.<\/p><\/div>\n

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#Utawesome Mural by @utawesome crew<\/a>, 59 W Center Street (behind IG Winery) One of the earlier additions to Cedar City’s downtown mural scene, this piece was installed by the Utah-based @utawesome collective, who documented its creation on Instagram. Their account offers a behind-the-scenes look at the mural’s making alongside broader trip-planning content celebrating Utah’s public art.<\/p><\/div>\n

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IG Winery Mural Artist: Rian Kasner Location: 59 W Center Street A hand-painted work where elegant dancers swirl and emerge from splashing wine, capturing the sensory richness of each IG Winery blend. Kasner’s bold use of color and fluid line work have made this one of the most photographed murals in the downtown corridor.<\/p><\/div>\n

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“You Belong” by Rian Kasner, 67 W Center Street (south side of the Bristlecone building). Commissioned by the Bristlecone Company, this large-scale mural is a statement of values as much as a work of art.<\/p><\/div>\n

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