'Eyesore' Games Pyramids to Be Spruced
Up
A kiosk at
South Temple and Main has been decorated by a
local artist, but others in the area have been
called eyesores.
(Al Hartmann/The Salt Lake
Tribune)
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BY HEATHER MAY
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
They were supposed
to be something to enliven downtown. Covered in art, the
17 giant pyramids on Salt Lake City's Main Street would
be eye-catching.
Instead, they
have become eyesores -- at least to some city officials
and downtown merchants.
While
most of the Olympic leftovers are decorated -- with, for
example, famous faces, body outlines, graffiti art or
Elizabeth Smart posters -- four of them remain blank.
Others are only partially finished. Many of the tops are
still orange or yellow.
"They are
eyesores, the state they're in now," Mayor Rocky
Anderson conceded Tuesday night at a City Council
meeting. "They should have been done by now. The artists
need to be given a deadline and get it done."
The artists have a deadline: next
weekend, said Jon Blanchard, a part-time city employee
who helped devise the kiosk-art plan as part of the
mayor's "Keeping the Spirit Alive: Sights and Sounds
Downtown." The committee was created to invigorate Main
Street after the Olympic hordes left. It stages free
weekend concerts and may start a monthly sidewalk arts
festival to highlight new artists.
While city officials got the
impression the pyramids would be decorated for last
month's Utah Arts Festival, artists were told to be
finished by July 19, in time for downtown's free monthly
Art Gallery Stroll, Blanchard said. All told, 16
pyramids will be beautified. One was damaged and will be
removed.
The project was launched
during last month's Gallery Stroll, though the
$6,000-apiece pyramids have sat empty since the end of
the Winter Games in February, when they were used to
sell food and drinks. Blanchard suggested the artists
work on one of the pyramids' four panels each weekend.
Maybe that was a mistake.
"If
anybody's to blame for them looking ugly, it's me," he
said. "I'm the one who gave them the deadline. I'd kind
of like them to be done, too."
They actually might have been completed sooner, but cash
for supplies has been low. The $150 cost per pyramid is
covered by donors.
"It's not a
lot of money, but if it's not there, it's not there,"
said Derek Dyer, a Salt Lake City artist who is
plastering pictures of famous people on his pyramid. "I
understand the [City] Council and the mayor are a little
bit concerned they aren't all finished yet. These
artists are donating their time and lot of us are
donating our own money."
Blanchard also had to round up more artists at the last
minute to bedeck four extra pyramids that Utah Arts
Festival organizers did not want. Artist Vincent Fitches
planned to paint "heroic nudes" on a pyramid this
weekend. But not wanting to be too controversial,
Blanchard suggested he do something more tame. "I don't
need that now."
Also this
weekend, the tops of the pyramids will be painted black
as a backdrop for the donors' names.
The pyramids could be removed if
people are not impressed. But Dyer says once the kiosks
are complete, they will be loved.
"They will look amazing when they are done."
hmay@sltrib.com
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