News: Utah Arts Festival’s Urban Arts Program Hits the Open Road

Utah Arts Festival’s Urban Arts Program Hits the Open Road

Open Road Community Art Project
with Higher Ground Learning and Spy Hop Productions

Salt Lake City, UT:  While the Utah Arts Festival is known for its vast Artist Marketplace, extensive Performing Arts program, Fear No Film Festival and Kids Art Yard, the Urban Arts area fosters arts for teen-agers and young adults in an evolving artistic landscape.

This year, under the leadership of artists Greg Covello and Mason Fetzer, Urban Arts is creating a community art project called the Open Road Project, a partnership with Higher Ground Learning and Spy Hop Productions. The project takes on two phases.

Stage One – Open Road Graffiti

Students of the Higher Ground Learning class start the week conceptualizing an open road scene. They will cut stencils for all of the elements needed to create the open road scene, such as cows, signs, fences, telephone poles, birds, etc. On Thursday and Friday, June 21 and 22 from 1 to 4 pm they will paint their road scene on the mural at the Festival.

Festival attendees will then be able to add their own graffiti to the scene to make the mural an ever-changing work of art created by the community.

Stage Two – Community Time Lapse Video

Cameras will be set up to record the changing piece of art in time lapse. Spy Hop Productions students will be shooting an Urban Arts documentary and will record people’s reactions and thoughts about the morphing wall.

Certain areas facing the mural will have "photo opportunity" spots marked with foot prints of where to stand. Attendees can take their own picture of the mural. They will use QR codes to email their contribution to openroaduaf@gmail.com and will be included in a massive slide show of Festival-goers and activity.

The entire project will be documented by Covello and Fetzer and published to uaf.org/openroad.

The 2012 Utah Arts Festival runs Thursday, June 21 through Sunday, June 24 from noon to 11 pm on Library Square, 400 South and 200 East in downtown Salt Lake City.

Adult admission is $10 at the gate, $7 in advance. Children 12 and under are free. Seniors 65 and above are $5. Reduced adult admission is $5 and available from noon to 3 pm on Thursday and Friday.

For details and more information visit www.uaf.org. Follow the Utah Arts Festival on Facebook and Twitter @utahartsfest.