Matt Monsoon enjoys that people can be themselves in Fairpark. For him, it’s refreshing and a major reason to live in the west-side neighborhood.
It’s why he joined the competition when Salt Lake City arts officials requested designs for a new public art installation two blocks from his home.
“I love my neighborhood, I love my community, and I love the people that make this such a cool place to live,” Monsoon, who also teaches visual merchandising at Salt Lake Community College, said. “For me, Fairpark represents the best of Salt Lake City. It’s the multiculturalism. It’s the live-and-let-live mentality, cooperation, unity.”
Now, a year and a half after the city’s art design board first identified the traffic circle at 500 North and 1300 West as a fitting place for a sculpture, Monsoon has been selected as the project’s artist and has finalized a design that he believes honors the working-class neighborhood.
Monsoon started with a quote from Western author Wallace Stegner: “Culture is a pyramid to which each of us brings a stone.” But recognizing that pyramids leave little space at the top for the “everyday heroes” of Fairpark, he inverted one as the central symbol of his steel design.
The structure will be arranged around a central axis with four panels attached to it, each pointing in a different direction. From overhead, it will look like an X.
The lower half of each panel will be a triangle with negative spaces between the steel made to look like the blocks of a pyramid. On top of each triangle will be the laser-cut profile of a young person or an elder. Monsoon said the faces will be ambiguous, so that all Fairpark residents can see themselves in the sculpture.
(Matt Monsoon) The elders' side of the installation is shown in this rendering of the 500 North and 1300 West traffic circle.
The effect is simple. As people walk or drive around the circle, they will view alternating young and old people facing outward on top of the flat, upside-down pyramid. The base of the installation will be made of the same material and have “Fairpark” and “SLC” stenciled into it.
Once cut and assembled, the sculpture will be treated with a patina finish, lending an authenticity and color Monsoon said better reflects Fairpark.
“[Monsoon] did a really good job of taking the engagement report, taking the outreach we did,” said Renato Olmedo-Gonzalez, the city’s public art manager, “and translated it into a really powerful artwork that I think is going to be a very good addition to the west side and the Fairpark neighborhood.”
The design takes a lot of the city’s goals for the project into account. The sculpture will have ample negative space through which drivers will be able to see other cars and people on the other side of the circle. Olmedo-Gonzalez also hopes the art will encourage people to slow down as they move through the intersection.
In the engagement process, some residents shared concerns about the eventual piece being vandalized. Olmedo-Gonzalez said the material can be cleaned easily and that it won’t take much effort to care for the installation.
Monsoon added the sculpture reflects the community and hopes that means residents will take pride in it.
He will clear the design with city engineers soon and then work with a fabrication company to build the sculpture. Fairpark neighbors can expect it to be installed by year’s end.
While Monsoon still has to finalize the dimensions of the piece with the engineers, the artwork will not be as large as “Out of the Blue,” commonly known as the 9th and 9th whale.
An installation of that scale is in the works for the west side, however, after the City Council allocated $150,000 for it in the latest round of its capital improvement program back in August.
