Salt Lake City – a group of a few dozen stopped and looked up at a blue drop of water and literally stared at her.
This droplet – with one eye on each side – is supposed to symbolize that it is a living being that local artist Trevor Dahl, who designed the piece, explains to the crowd.
“The eye represents the awareness of nature and something that we should all remember in this urban jungle what the jumping point of this project is,” he said, spoke through a megaphone when cars buzzed behind him and the construction industry worked on the temple square behind him.
Dahl's piece is one of eight new art installations that have added the poles along the north temple from State Street to 400 west, all of which highlight a water source under the floor and the meaning of water.
All eight are part of an art installation called “Hidden Waters”, which follows the path of City Creek, while it continues from the City Creek Park towards Jordan further west.
“We want to ignite the ideas of water,” said Britney Helmers, program director of the Blocks Arts District, a segment of Salt Lake City Downtown Alliance, opposite KSL.com and added to think about the water preservation and the hidden stream among them.
The project is about a year and a half in the creation, starting when Seven Canyons Trust, a non-profit organization that is committed to the “daylight” underground streams, brought a art in the city center, in which water sources were highlighted in the blocks of the blocks.
Seven Canyons Trust is behind a project that is supposed to uncover part of the City Creek along the Folsom Trail in Pappelhain. The streams and streams that travel from the Wasatch Mountains travel due to the development on the ground, but the organization argues that the removal of these obstacles has many advantages, including improved water quality and embellishment.
“It's not just about revealing streams, but also about diving the stories, cultures and creativity again,” said Ronnie Pessetto, the director of the organization.
The program of the blocks recorded around 30,000 US dollars in the concept over the 90,000 to 125,000 US dollars, which sets the organization aside every year for various unique art installations in the city center. Almost two dozen artists submitted their concepts for examination, and the field was reduced to eight, based on various criteria.
The artist Sawyer Stroud explains his painting of a group of people who gathered to see all the tricks “Hidden Waters” on the north temple in Salt Lake City on Friday. (Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.com)
A board that made up of the two organizations and a few external donors selected the winning designs after they had taken into account different perspectives and emphasized people with a different background, explained Helmers.
While Dahl focused on vigilance, Cara Jean Hall concentrated on Utah's local plants that she had recently planted after removing parking strips at home. Sawyer Stroud showed the relationship between Mountain Snowpack in the region, its streams, streams, rivers and lakes.
The design of Kate Wolsey celebrates skiing on the one hand and the hockey on the other – the latter an allusion to her home canada – to symbolize how water in its frozen forms is the “basis” for about every Olympic winter sport. Vicky Lowe also relied on the history of her family and paints water protection that uses her indigenous Mexican roots.
“As an indigenous people, we tried to protect the country and the water for (hundreds of years),” she said, adding that on the other hand, she left the message “Water is holy” to bring the importance of water sources home.
Vicky Lowe's painting of water protection is visible on Friday from the north temple near Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake City. (Photo: Carter Williams, KSL.com)
The pieces remain for at least a year, but Helmers said the goal was to maintain similar art installations for the next decade, which led to the 2034 and Paralympics Winter Games. The organizations examine rotating displays or more drops of water that could be added throughout the city.
A few other streams also flow in different parts under the city. This includes red butte, emigration and parleys streams that converge before flows into the Jordanian river. Seven Canyons Trust triggered a project for daylight, which led to the creation of the three Creeks Confluence Park in Glendale four years ago.
“We are working to beautify the city, and everyone is only trying to get several different stories about the past to get the presence of Salt Lake City and how we will change our future,” said Helmers.