Artists Turn Downtown SLC's Olympic Kiosks Into Pyramids of Art Sunday, June 23, 2002   Salt Lake City artist Derek Dyer helped spearhead the grassroots project on Main Street. (Eric Delphenich) BY BRANDON GRIGGS THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE     Nobody will ever confuse them with the great pyramids at Giza, but the pointy Olympic kiosks along Salt Lake City's beleaguered Main Street are looking a lot more festive.     A group of volunteer artists are decorating the pyramid-shaped structures, which will remain on downtown sidewalks at least through November. The project should be done this week, and a celebratory artists' reception is scheduled Friday at 6 p.m. at the Downtown Alliance offices, 238 S. Main St.     "The whole idea behind this is to help transform Main Street into more of an interesting place that people will want to visit," said Derek Dyer, a Salt Lake City artist who helped spearhead the grass-roots project. City officials are looking for ways to enliven Main Street downtown, where shuttered storefronts almost outnumber active businesses. The painted pyramids coincide with a new city ordinance allowing artists to sell their works on the sidewalk.     The city paid $6,000 each for the kiosks before the Winter Olympics, and now hopes to turn them into artistic reminders of the Games. So 14 of the pyramids, lining Main Street from South Temple to 400 South, will become temporary, three-dimensional canvases.     Like the similar-themed Buffalo Project, which invited artists to decorate fiberglass buffaloes which were then mounted around the city, the Pyramid Project promises a diverse assemblage of street art. Natalie Hart is creating an abstract Salt Lake cityscape. Michael Zetterquist is painting two large hands against a swirling, Van Gogh-like sky. Jared Hayes promises an airbrushed sci-fi scene.     Dyer is designing his pyramid to test how passersby react to famous faces. The artist is creating a collage of more than 100 well-known faces, from Madonna and Michael Jordan to Newt Gingrich -- and even Osama bin Laden. His goal, he says, is to see which celebrities people react to and why.     Among the other artists involved, all of them from Utah, are Nataunya Kay, Michelle Davidson, Terry Scopes, Lisa Oliver and Holly Meyer. The artists are not being paid, although sponsors, including the Downtown Alliance, are donating art supplies.     Depending on how popular the pyramids prove with merchants, pedestrians and city officials, they may remain on the street indefinitely. New groups of artists would redecorate them about every six months, Dyer said.         © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on Utah OnLine is copyrighted The Salt Lake Tribune and associated news services. No material may be reproduced or reused without explicit permission from The Salt Lake Tribune.