Heber City Americana musician Alicia Stockman was driving home after a horrible house show in Dallas when her engine block cracked and began leaking coolant into the oil, which may as well have been a terminal diagnosis for her car. She “limped” her way to a Kia dealership in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she called her ex-boyfriend and parents, in tears and beside herself. 

“I was 36 at the time. I was not a young kid. I was a full-ass grown adult,” she joked. “My parents came and picked me up, and we towed my car home, and I sold it for salvage. It was this dark window of time when everything was upended, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Stockman had been contemplating a move to Nashville, Tennessee, but at that moment, she realized she wanted nothing more than to be safe at home in Heber City. 

“The whole point of leaving was to run away from my problems. Then, coming home, (I had) no other (option) but to face them head-on and be upset,” she said. 

The experience inspired the title track on her latest album, “Homebound.” The album’s lyrics, which Stockman wrote between 2021 and 2026, explore break-ups, bowling and, most often, place. 

For example, “Jerkwater Town” is an ode to a small town and its residents who refuse to abandon it. Though it mentions a train and “our own Dairy Queen,” bringing local favorites like the Heber Valley Railroad and Dairy Keen to mind, Stockman actually wrote it about an artsy town of 2,000 people in West Texas called Marfa.

“Marfa is a weird word, and no one knew what I was talking about, so I took it out of the song, which, at the end of the day, serves it better. I’ve had people from all over be like, ‘This is my hometown you’re talking about,’” she said.

Meanwhile, “League Night” is indisputably an ode to Heber City’s Holiday Lanes. 

“Growing up in Heber, it was every birthday party, every gathering. … My boyfriend is in the league on Tuesday nights in the winter, which is 34 weeks long. That is almost a human child’s gestation period,” she joked. “I’d spend a lot of time there being like, ‘This is such a vintage vibe. It’s so weird. It’s got so much character.’”

The track’s been a hit at shows, so much so that one family showed up to a concert in Layton in matching bowling shirts. 

“Bowling is like Dolly Parton. It brings everyone together,” Stockman said. 

But “League Night” hasn’t been nearly as much of a crowd-pleaser as the album’s closer, “Crimson Blues.”

“I would not know which song to end a set with, and I’d be like, ‘Do you guys want to hear a song about murder or bowling?’” she said. “You would think there would be more debate, but 98% of the people not requested, screamed the word, ‘Murder!’”

“Crimson Blues,” Stockman explained, is a clapback to bluegrass murder ballads.

“They’re all in major keys, and they’re just fun, upbeat songs about killing women for various reasons that aren’t very compelling,” she said. “This is … my unhinged, slightly psychotic, true crime-loving murder ballad.”

Moving from bowling to a murder ballad in the span of a few tracks is a reflection of Stockman’s growth as a songwriter in the five years since her last album, “These Four Walls.”

“The rule of thumb is you have to write 100 songs before you really have your voice,” she said. 

Stockman feels she finally found that in “September.” She’s particularly proud of the lyric, “The first frost feels like closure, nature’s way of starting over. The woman I’ll be next fall, will I know her?”

Stockman’s voice, she said, is more “pedestrian” than “poetic.” She uses visual imagery to paint scenes of particular moments in her life or conversations she’s had. 

Stockman’s growth in the past five years hasn’t been restricted to her songwriting. She’s also become more comfortable identifying as an artist instead of just “someone who plays music on the weekends.” These days, musicianship is her primary source of income, despite the fact that she doesn’t put too much effort into her social media presence and barely pays attention to her streaming statistics. 

“It’s been a really weird space to navigate, to release a record in this day and age of AI and Ticketmaster and all that stuff,” Stockman said.

Her focus has been playing shows, selling merch and making in-person connections with fans and fellow musicians. 

“(A fan) emailed me to tell me that he had to get an MRI. They asked him what he wanted to listen to, and he picked my music to help calm him while he was there,” she said. “That’s worth all the Spotify streaming numbers.”

Stockman’s work has been especially focused on her hometown. She started a house concert series as an incubator for local and touring musicians and hopes to launch songwriting workshops. 

Stockman’s determination to move to Nashville a few years ago was driven by her desire to be part of its music scene and explore more of the world outside of Utah.

“I live one block from where I went to kindergarten. There were many times when I wrestled with the idea of feeling ashamed about living in my hometown still. It’s a pretty small town, or it was. So, 17-year-old me was really disappointed in mid-30s me for not going anywhere,” she said.

But Stockman has realized she doesn’t need to move to a music mecca; she can create one where she grew up. 

“Once I embraced it, it changed things for me, and I started to build community in a way that I think I had been kind of avoiding,” she said. “I am on a mission to force my friendship any time I meet a new musician in the area. … What those cities have that we don’t have as well is that networking and that cohesiveness.”

Though Stockman has lived in Wasatch and Summit counties her entire life, it wasn’t until the last few years that she finally felt at home.

“The theme that I say about the record is, ‘Home is big enough to hold all the versions of yourself,’” she said. “Coming home, you can be who you were before and who you’ve become now. You don’t have to pick one or the other.”

Stockman’s next local shows are at Heber City Main Street Park on Thursday, and on Aug. 29 and 30, Le Depot Brasserie in Park City on Sept. 4 and St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Heber City on Sept. 12. Learn more at aliciastockman.com.

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An Atari controller with hands plays itself. A friendly, lean fellow in a bow tie, looking like an extra in the 2005 animated film “Robots,” pours four drinks at once. A 4-foot-tall troll holds a spear in one hand and dangles a key in the other, seemingly asking for a password. 

The father of each of these metal creatures is sculptor Adam Holman from Tucson, Arizona, one of 195 artists who exhibited on Park City Main Street over the weekend during the Kimball Arts Festival. 

Holman has been obsessed with Jim Henson, “Star Wars” and LEGO since he was a kid, if it wasn’t obvious from his passion for birthing weird little monsters using his imagination and hands.

“I kind of think of them as steel cartoons in a way. I’m always thinking, ‘What story do they fit into? What world do they fit into? What might their backstory be?’” he said. “That’s, I think, why they have so much life.”

Holman’s creations incorporate both new metal and found objects from estate sales and junkyards. The troll’s key, for example, comes from an actual castle. Homan’s stepfather, an Army veteran stationed in Germany in the 1960s, brought home lots of strange souvenirs.

“On the weekends, he’d go in the German countryside, and he’d pick through these bombed-out castles from World War II. He came home with, like, 50 keys,” Holman said. “They’re probably stolen and hot merchandise, but perfect for that.”

The strangest object Holman has ever used was a component of a radiology machine that a radiologist client gifted him.

“It looks like something out of a ‘Buck Rogers’ movie,” he said. “We actually had to take a Geiger counter to it, make sure it wasn’t radioactive.”

Holman started his artistic practice as an eighth-grade English teacher, picking up welding from family members. He’s now been an artist full-time for 30 years. 

This was Holman’s second year at Kimball Arts Festival. He first attended about two decades ago and finally freed up his schedule to make the trek to Park City again. The crowd was just as enthusiastic as he remembered. 

Artists in Holman’s circle constantly recommend the Kimball Arts Festival, he said.

“That word of mouth becomes so important, especially from other artists,” he said. “That’s firsthand experience, not ‘I hope it’s a good show.’ It is a good show. They get a good crowd. It’s well organized. It’s a beautiful location. You can’t really lose.”

Artist Cassidy Watt from Santa Fe, New Mexico, said the same. This was his third year at Kimball Arts Festival. 

Watt specializes in “totems” of copper and brass, composed entirely of scrap metal left over from making jewelry. 

Each stripe of the rectangular prism shows a different pattern — one turquoise and marble-like, another black and etched with gold. The catch? Watt produced the various colors and patterns without using a single drop of paint, only chemical reactions. 

“Everything I do is a patina. It’s a reaction,” he said. “But I’m self-taught, so everything you see here is something I’ve invented myself, whether it’s a chemical formula or even the process of how to get the patterns with said chemical formula.”

Watt uses chemicals ranging from those found under the kitchen sink to those you’d only ever find in a science lab. And no, there haven’t been any exploding test tube incidents. In fact, the only time the artist has injured himself was when he sliced his hand with a wire wheel while preparing metal. 

“It’s thousands of pieces of steel wire moving at a couple of thousand RPMs,” he said. “What I learned is (that) you have to be careful. So, when I’m doing a job, it doesn’t matter how long or short, I take it seriously.”

Self-described “mad scientist” Watt wasn’t the only inventive type at the Kimball Arts Festival. Bob McNally from Rockaway, New Jersey, visited for the first time with his original instrument, the Strumstick.

McNally invented the Strumstick in 1984, wanting to design an instrument for “the musically disinclined.”

“I had been building instruments for 14 years, and I also taught guitar for about 12 years. I specifically wanted to make an instrument for beginners that would not make them quit because they were frustrated with how bad they sounded, which is why people quit guitar,” he said. 

The Strumstick has the neck of an acoustic guitar and the fret pattern of a dulcimer. It only has three strings, and the chords are much simpler than a guitar.

“That’s very, very accessible, because it’s hard to do anything that you don’t like,” McNally said.

The instrument’s been picked up by professional musicians, including Tracy Chapman, Amy Grant and Jon Anderson from Yes. Its dulcet tones were a hit with Parkites, too.

While many artists came to the Kimball Arts Festival from across the country, there were also plenty of locals.

Painter Sadie AbuHaidar was raised in Park City and currently lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she works as a wrangler and ski instructor.

AbuHaidar takes equal inspiration from pop art and the Old West. Her works range from javelinas painted on discarded diner placemats to cowboys on horseback, but a self-portrait sticks out among her body of work. It depicts AbuHaidar in melancholy orange and blue hues staring down two trout. 

“I fly fish quite a bit. As a woman, you are pretty alone out there on the river, and it’s a very gatekeepy world out there as well. I mean, you’ll go into a fly fishing store, and the workers in there would rather do anything but tell you where to fish or how to get resources or what flies to use or anything,” she explained. “I made that piece around that lonely feeling. You’re kind of having to stick up for yourself.”

Womanhood is a central theme in AbuHaidar’s work. Her goal is to modernize romanticized Wild West stereotypes by including more gender and racial diversity in the subjects she depicts. 

“A lot of times you don’t see (women) represented, or they’re represented in a pin-up, objectified way,” she said. “A lot of my stuff has that kind of more working, gritty feel to it, no matter who’s in the piece.”

AbuHaidar’s sole passions growing up were horseback riding and painting. In high school, she was a student in the Kimball Arts Center’s Young Artists’ Academy and a volunteer at the Kimball Arts Festival. For AbuHaidar, participating in the festival as an artist for the first time this year was a full-circle moment. 

“It was very cool growing up, being able to go to this festival. It gave me that first thought that I can be a working artist, and this is not some stupid vision for the future that’s not attainable,” she said. “To be able to work my way up … and be able to show my own stuff is really, really special to me.”

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Recent passersby on Heber City’s Main Street may have noticed Midway muralist Pamela Flynn perched on a scaffold, painting the side of the Casago building. She’s only there between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. The July heat has been a bit much to handle during the day.

“It’s, like, 105 on that concrete,” Flynn said. “The whole building is black except for the part that I am working on. The other day, I was putting on the primer, and sweat was just pouring off me.”

The odd painting schedule works perfectly fine for Flynn. She’s a night owl who’s typically up that late creating anyway. She paints animals, landscapes and occasionally her husband dressed as a mountain man, coonskin cap and all. 

Flynn’s latest project is Heber City’s newest public art installation. Funded by a $2,850 grant from the city’s Trails, Arts & Parks Tax, the mural’s goal is to “enhance downtown’s visual appeal, strengthen community identity and reinforce Main Street as a creative destination that supports local businesses and community pride,” said Rachel Kahler, executive director of the Community Alliance for Main Street, the nonprofit managing the project.

The mural, 13 feet tall and 31 feet wide, reads “Hello Heber” over a mountain landscape in orange, black and blue tones. Casago owner Jeff Harris hopes the mural serves a similar purpose to the iconic Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign.

“It’s the first mural you might see when you come into town, almost like that Las Vegas one,” he said. “The whole idea was to get people to stop and take pictures, and then develop more visibility for Heber as a tourist destination.”

Harris manages about 60 vacation rentals in the Heber Valley, which will expand to over 300 when Avari Vacation Rentals acquires the company next month. Casago has operated out of the building on Main Street for the past eight months. 

Harris has visited the Heber Valley since he was a kid. He said it’s always been a tourist destination, but with recent developments like Deer Valley East Village, visitation is booming more than ever.

“In five years, everybody’s going to have heard of Heber. I think the train’s left the station. There’s no turning that back,” he said.

In Harris’ eyes, the “Hello Heber” mural is a way to greet visitors and new residents with open arms.

“When I first moved here in 2020 … I still had a California (license plate). A guy literally accosted me in the (gas station) parking lot. He screamed and yelled at me about moving up here from California, and I wasn’t welcome here, and all this other stuff,” he said. “We want people to feel welcome here.”

Flynn was the ideal candidate to paint Harris’ vision. Her experience stretches back to childhood.

How does a child get permission to paint murals, you might ask?

“Your mom is awesome, that’s how,” Flynn said. “You’re 9, and you go, ‘Mom, can I paint on the walls of my bedroom?’ And your mom goes, ‘All right. It’s just paint.’”

So Flynn painted mermaid habitats, jungles dotted with the glow-in-the-dark eyes of predators and the covers of all her favorite Boston and Van Halen albums on her bedroom walls.

Her current bedroom is painted like a castle with bats fluttering around on the starry ceiling.

Flynn refined her skills while apprenticing under Latter-day Saint artist Linda Curley Christensen for the past decade. Christensen leads a mural-painting team for the church out of a studio in Wallsburg.

“All of these canvases are put up in a barn that’s been converted to a massive studio, and they are on these movable easels. Everything gets gridded. Everything gets put up. It all has to be OK’d first before you can even put it on there,” Flynn said. “Each one of those murals is a two-year project. They’re huge.”

Murals Flynn has worked on have been installed at temples in South Jordan, St. George, Mesa, Arizona and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

But her favorite murals are the ones she’s painted at home, in the Midway Town Hall, Heber City Public Safety Building and Rocky Mountain Middle School.

“I lost two daughter-in-laws in the past five years. … It really put things in perspective, and it really made me say, ‘What do I want to leave behind when I’m gone?’” Flynn said. “(My husband) is always saying, ‘Honey, you left your mark on this valley.’”

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Artist Michelle Koskovich’s Heber City home is filled with flowers she never waters, blooming all year long. Unlike most gardeners, Koskovich doesn’t begin by burying a seed in soil. Instead, she takes her scissors to soda cans to create recycled aluminum flowers — an art style she refers to as “a-bloom-inum.”

Koskovich is currently preparing for her home’s equivalent of autumn. The color sprouting from countless vases and lining her studio walls will disappear when she sells many of her metal flowers at the third annual Wasatch Back Art Festival at Heber City Main Street Park next weekend, July 24-26.

The arts festival was organized by Heber City landscape photographer Johnny Adolphson and his wife, Sherry, to provide an outlet for local artists in a community where such opportunities are limited.

“It’s hard to get the exposure that you really need to connect,” Johnny said. “We created the Wasatch Back Art Festival hoping to make that connection between local artists and all the folks moving in.”

This year, the art festival will feature about 70 artists, including Koskovich. She’s participated in plenty of other festivals throughout the American southwest, including the Park Silly Sunday Market and the Utah Arts Festival, but it’s her first time at the Wasatch Back Art Festival.

Koskovich’s aluminum bouquets range from $40 to, in one instance, $600, purchased by a customer to whom money was no object.

“She didn’t even ask the price. She just came and said, ‘I want that,'” Koskovich said.

The tired adage about trash becoming treasure has never been truer. Oddly formed logs, chipped tea cups and rusted pots often become vases or foundations of larger art pieces incorporating Koskovich’s aluminum flowers. 

Koskovich finds many of her materials rummaging through dumpsters in alleyways or spotting interesting litter on the side of the road. Her greatest find so far is a wooden bench that looks like it belongs in an antique store.

“You wouldn’t believe what people put out,” she said.

Her friends and family know to never throw away a can, even though she already has several tubs full of them in her basement. They’ve also learned to wash them after Koskovich found mold and chewed gum in a few.

To create the head of a flower, Koskovich halves a can, then cuts patterns resembling petals. The aluminum keeps the scissors sharp, so she’s only had to use one pair in the eight years she’s been making them — other than the decorative scissors she sometimes uses to cut patterns.

“I’ve poked myself, but I’ve never cut myself,” she said. “Once you get the rigidness out of the can, it kind of becomes like a ribbon. It’s soft.”

Koskovich then ties the two halves together. She sometimes uses a contraption — a manual juicer affixed with nails — to punch several holes through the center, creating the look of a flower’s disk. 

“I used to have my dad do one-at-a-time holes. He quit on me,” she said.

Koskovich then sprays paint on a flower’s head, the mixed paints intensifying a metallic sheen. 

For the stem, she uses metal wire. Once, she accidentally used welding wire and found them “drooping” under their own weight the next morning, as if they hadn’t been watered.

Koskovich came up with aluminum flowers in 2018 while remodeling her former home in Durango, Colorado. The mailbox was “dilapidated,” so she made it an art piece sprouting with flowers. It’s been non-stop ever since.

Koskovich’s bouquets often delight libation-loving customers when they realize some of the flowers were originally beer cans. One customer stopped to smell the roses and sniffed out a Keystone Light with a greyhound’s precision.

Koskovich has lived in Heber City for two years, and the lack of local recycling services has given her even more reason to continue repurposing her garbage.

Koskovich has enjoyed art her whole life, but ironically, she’s never been much of a gardener.

“I think (I was a florist) in a past life. Or just crazy,” she joked. “I’m pretty convinced that’s what it is.”

Koskovich creates custom pieces and can be reached at mkoskovich@me.com.

The Wasatch Back Art Festival runs from noon to 6 p.m. on July 24 and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on July 25-26. Admission is free. Beyond artists selling work, there will also be performances by local musicians. Learn more at wasatchbackartfestival.com.

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A cannabis shop, motel and McDonald’s in a row on Heber City Main Street. Cows grazing in the North Fields. Mount Timpanogos obscured by the wildfire-induced haze and ash that swept through the Wasatch Back last Friday. 

These are but a few of the paintings that can be found in Midway Town Hall during the Midway Art Association’s 19th annual Plein Air Paradise festival, which continues through Saturday.

Plein air is a French art form that involves painting outdoors. 

The Midway Art Association’s festival included four plein air events over the past two weeks: the main competition, in which artists must paint Wasatch and Summit counties, competitions restricted to Heber City and Midway, and a nocturne or sunrise painting competition.

The festival also has several auctions, including an auction of work artists will paint around Midway’s town square on Saturday morning.

Plein air artists combine the skill sets of visionary Vincent van Gogh and survivalist Bear Grylls. There’s a lot of preparation involved, according to Midway Art Association copresident Marge Bowen.

“A lot of artists will have wagons, but then you have to be able to roll it to where you’re going. There are easels that you can use as backpacks, so some artists are pretty compact,” she said. “Plein air artists have to be prepped to be outside in anything.”

Still, excursions sometimes turn into disasters.

“Bugs can fly into the wet paint. … If the wind kicks up, I’m telling you, a whole easel can go down. … When you’re standing outside in the North Fields, you’ll have trucks go by, and there’s a lot of dust, so you’ve got to be ready for that,” she said. “There’s lots of fun things that can go on out there.”

The festival has attracted 135 brave artists to the Wasatch Back this year. They hope to earn awards as large as $2,200 and sell their artwork along the way. They hail from nine states, some coming from as far as Florida and Hawaii. 

But many of these artists are locals, such as Heber City resident M. Scott Woodruff, who has participated in the competition for about four years. 

Woodruff has been obsessed with art ever since he was a kid.

“Sitting on my dad’s lap at church, he would draw on the back of the sacrament program to keep me quiet, because I had a lot of energy. He was a graphics designer, so art was his natural language. I became transfixed on that,” he said.

When it came time to pick a career, Woodruff wanted to become an artist.

“My dad’s like, ‘I’ll break your fingers if you become an artist,’” he said. “I didn’t know that’s an in-joke among artists. I took it seriously.”

So he pursued architecture instead, which gave him opportunities to sketch buildings for clients.

Woodruff retired three years ago and discovered plein air painting at a competition in Ogden. He thought of himself as an amateur, but his painting of the Hill Aerospace Museum placed second in the professional category. He’s been hooked ever since.

He typically begins with a pencil sketch before outlining it with a fine tip pen and painting it with watercolors. 

In a competition full of paintings of natural landscapes and wildlife, Woodruff’s depictions of buildings around Heber City stand out. Every brick and wooden slat is intricately detailed, and the buildings have a sense of texture viewers can almost touch.

Woodruff is drawn to painting buildings related to the Heber Valley Railroad in no small part because he worked there as a conductor about two decades ago. His grandfather was also a conductor on the tourist railroad. 

Woodruff completed his nocturne painting, the train station under the light of the full moon, on Tuesday evening. Another of his plein air works, which he painted during last year’s competition, depicts the Heber Valley Railroad’s original depot, broken windows and all.

“It’s just sad watching it decay. But it gets a lot of interesting texture and detail, and there’s history here,” Woodruff said. 

The artist’s passion for historic buildings is evident from his attention to detail and relentless enthusiasm.

“This is the real heart and soul of the community, because you go south of the city park, and it could be Main Street, Anywhere U.S.A., because you’ve got all your chain stores,” he said. “But then, north of that, up to the city building, which was the old Wasatch Stake Tabernacle, that’s the real texture, that’s the real nature of Heber.”

For two of Woodruff’s plein air pieces this year, he scouted out historic homes and painted them from the comfort of his camping chair. He ended up talking to the owners of one of the homes, who happened to be in their yard when he was setting up.

“They’d been in the house for 20 years. They love it,” he said. “It’s got an original sandstone foundation. It’s this typical 1890s, 1900s form on it, especially with all the beautiful woodwork.”

Painting in public often leads to conversations and compliments, which Woodruff joked give him hope for the human race in a time that often feels chaotic and negative.

Plein air painting is an excellent way to gain a greater appreciation for one’s surroundings, he said.

“You can live in an area and not really see it until you have to slow down and paint it,” he said. “You can snap a pic … and it’s one of the hundreds or thousands of pictures on your phone that (makes you think), ‘Why did I take that pic?’ But when you sit down and do a painting, it’s an investment.”

Artwork from the Midway Art Association’s Plein Air Paradise festival will be available to browse and purchase at Midway Town Hall until 6 p.m. on Friday and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

The quick draw will also take place Saturday morning for those interested in watching artists paint around Midway’s town square. At 11 a.m., that work will be auctioned off. Learn more at midwayartassociation.com.

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Heber City theater company Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s production of the Tony award-winning musical “1776,” which depicts the months of debates leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, is full of famous faces. But actor Don Doud is playing a somewhat obscure Founding Father.

Doud had never heard of Delawarean Continental Congressman Caesar Rodney until he was cast as him.

In a fictionalized scene set in early June 1776, Rodney breaks up a fight between fellow delegates John Adams and John Dickinson, who are on opposing sides of whether the colonies should secede from Britain. When Rodney finally gets Adams and Dickinson to stop trying to whack each other with their canes, he collapses due to his health issues from skin cancer.

The scene is a reminder that debates over independence were a lot more contentious and chaotic than what might be presented in a history class. It’s also a microcosm of what director Kristen Hughes wanted to accomplish with the play: encouraging civil disagreement in a politically polarized time.

In tone, “1776” has more in common with “12 Angry Men” than “Schoolhouse Rock.” Most of the lyrics of the opening song, “Sit Down, John,” are about the sweltering heat and flies buzzing around Independence Hall in Philadelphia. 

Hughes called Adams, the song’s subject and protagonist of the play, a “pushy little man” whom other delegates disliked because of his insistence on independence.

The play depicts each of the Founding Fathers not as infallible heroes, but human beings with their own quirks. 

Thomas Jefferson is introverted and cerebral, while Benjamin Franklin is a manipulative jester of a politician, constantly “schmoozing” and “partying” with his fellow delegates. They’re far more than faces on currency, as Hughes put it. Each delegate had their own grievances, or lack of them, depending on their colony’s interactions with the crown. As such, each man had a different idea of what independence should look like.

That’s explored when Jefferson writes a draft of the Declaration of Independence that impassionately condemns slavery as a “cruel war against human nature itself,” despite being a slave owner himself.

That passage was later removed. The exact reason why is unknown, though Jefferson, in his autobiography, said it was a concession made to delegates from South Carolina and Georgia. 

“That’s the one concession they made, which later just kicked the can down the road to the Civil War and caused lots of bloodshed. It’s very sobering,” Hughes said. “(The song ‘Molasses to Rum’) talks about how the North is complicit because they provide the ships that bring the slaves. They use the sugar. They drink the rum. They consume the products created by the slaves. So, they’re making money off it, too, even if they don’t own them.”

In the play, it’s delegate Edward Rutledge of South Carolina who performs the number; “1776” often combines several delegates into one character.

Dickinson, the delegate from Pennsylvania and the play’s antagonist, embodies the argument against independence, hoping for reconciliation with Britain. In the play’s climax, he does not sign the Declaration of Independence. Even as he makes that decision, his greatest opponent, Adams, applauds his character.

Hughes hopes the pair’s respect for each other despite their differing opinions inspires audience members to engage in political discussions with people they disagree with.

“We’re all working towards the same problems. We have different ideas about how to solve those problems, but maybe that’s how we’ll come to the best solutions,” she said.

Hughes sees “threats of authoritarianism” under the current presidential administration as the greatest threat to the country today.

“My personal (point of view) is that things are being dismantled, institutions and things that have kept safeguards in place for a long, long time. … The power structure is being altered,” she said. 

She hopes that reflection on the signing of the Declaration of Independence during its 250th anniversary prompts Americans to become passionate about defending its founding principles of democracy and unalienable rights.

“(The Founding Fathers were) willing to put their lives and their property and their families on the line,” Hughes said. “It was a huge sacrifice on their part, and it is something that we could maybe hold more reverently or dearly than we do.”

Even if “1776” doesn’t engender those feelings in all audience members, Hughes is content with the fact that she was able to hold the attention of a few “Hamilton”-obsessed teenage audience members who attended a performance last week.

“They said, ‘We were in here for three hours, and it didn’t feel like three hours,’” she said. “If a teenager says that, I feel like there’s my little gold star on the forehead that we did our job.”

Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s production of “1776” will be staged Wednesday and Friday, with a special matinee performance on Saturday as part of Heber City’s Red, White & Blue Festival. The play’s 29 actors will also be marching in the city’s morning parade and would love to share their characters’ real stories. Learn more and buy tickets at timpvalleytheatre.com.

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Eighteen-year-old Heber City folk singer-songwriter Canyon Cottle’s debut album, “September,” which was released in February, is littered with nods to the Wasatch Back. 

“Kids Up in Kamas,” for example, is an ode to both the eastern Summit County town and Heber City’s agricultural roots.

“I’m almost jealous of the kids up in Kamas for having everything that this town was. … Things (have been) growing exponentially, especially after COVID,” Cottle said. “That entire town just reminds me of what it looked like (in Heber City) before I was born. When I was younger, we’d drive up and go to the swimming pool. It looked almost like a ghost town in certain spots because it was just so quaint.”

The second track, “Pine Canyon,” refers to a scenic drive on the titular Midway road. 

Meanwhile, the title track mentions driving past a tree in front of a house with initials carved into it. This lyric is not based on a specific location. It was, in fact, by Cottle’s grandmother after he showed her the song during a camping trip.

“She was like, ‘Can I write some lyrics for you? It needs to be more preppy and lovely and happy and goo-goo eyes.’ I was like, ‘OK, Grandma, whatever. I’m writing songs about painful crap,’” Cottle joked. “She’s like, ‘Yeah, but what about love and romance?’”

A tree with initials carved into it is something Cottle would brand as cliché. Incorporating the lyric anyway is Cottle’s embrace of the simple, tender aspects of life and a shout-out to both his grandmother and the countless engraved aspens in Heber City.

The album’s structure is based on the progression of the seasons. Cottle wrote “Lovely, Aren’t They” on the banjo in the driveway of his house, taking inspiration from the falling leaves surrounding him. In the song, he likens the arrival of autumn to the death of a relationship.

“For a lot of people, that’s the most heart-wrenching, painful thing to ever experience, watching something wither and die. For me, that’s pretty natural. That’s normal. I watch crops die and disappear in the fall. The corn stalks kind of wither and go away, and you have to clean them up, and leaves, and all the things. That’s life,” he said.

Lead single “Smoke in the Sky” also takes inspiration from a breakup. Cottle’s gravelly growl at the beginning of the acoustic chorus intentionally imitates a chainsmoker’s cadence.

The song’s guttural feeling clearly resonated with listeners. Despite being the first song the teenage songwriter had ever released, it was a breakout hit, with over 175,000 streams on Spotify alone since its release last April. 

The experience inflated Cottle’s ego quite a bit, he joked.

“Spotify has an app where you can check your stats 24/7 and look at things. Not the most healthy thing you could do with your life,” Cottle laughed. “(A few days after the song was released), I’m in the commons of Wasatch (High School), and I flip it up to see if anyone looks over my shoulder to look at the stats with me. And there were 40 people listening to the track at the same time.”

Cottle attributes the song’s popularity to its catchy hook and producer Luke Despain’s placement of the song on official Spotify playlists. On top of that, the stylistic influence of the stratospherically popular folk singer Noah Kahan probably helped.

Having a song with more streams than there are people in the entire Wasatch Back has been surreal for Cottle: getting side-eyed in school hallways, being asked for a few autographs and being recognized in Walmart by a little girl who called him that “singer guy.”

It’s a far cry from Cottle writing his first songs on guitar and piano in his freshman year, often procrastinating math homework at the Wasatch County Library by going down a rabbit hole of live performances by artists like The Backseat Lovers, a Provo-formed rock band, and Billy Joel. Those influences, along with performing in Timpanogos Valley Theatre and High Valley Arts productions as a kid, formed Cottle’s stage presence.

“It was cool to be able to lay my heart out for people to look at — which is the weirdest thing to say — and to have them take pictures,” he said. “It’s exciting because your heart races. You get on stage, and then it’s like the mic disappears because you close your eyes, and then you just play, and it turns into fun.”

Songwriting is fulfilling for an entirely different reason, he said.

“I think songwriting takes in all the different parts of your brain and meshes together what a human sounds like,” he said.

Now that Cottle has graduated from high school, he’s ready to explore whatever challenges the adult world throws at him through songwriting. He plans to move away from the obvious Kahan influence to a raw, emotional indie sound inspired by artists like Phoebe Bridgers or Lizzie McAlpine.

“I want them to feel it more. I feel like there’s a lot of wholesomeness in the music right now,” he explained. “(I want to write) songs with deeper harmonies and melodies that kind of converge, and then build, and then drop and disappear out of nowhere, where it’s just stomach-dropping.”

Cottle hopes to continue writing music throughout his life and to make it a full-time career, whether by opening a recording studio or becoming a professional songwriter.

He’s both excited and concerned by the idea of becoming as famous as someone like Kahan, whose tiny hometown of Strafford, Vermont, has become a bit of a tourist hotspot for superfans because of the lyrical references to it in Kahan’s songwriting. 

As someone who’s experienced more fame than most teenagers, Cottle has had concerns about the same happening to Heber City if he were to become a sensation. For now, Cottle is content with being beloved locally.  

No matter what the future holds for him, Cottle hopes to look back on this season of life with fondness.

“I think I’ll look back (at) now knowing that I tried to embody some sort of positivity or hope,” he said.

Cottle’s next performance will be from 9 to 11 p.m. on Saturday at Jade’s Cafe. He will also be performing at the Heber City Red, White & Blue Festival on Saturday, July 4.

The post Heber City is at the heart of folk musician Canyon Cottle’s songwriting appeared first on Park Record.

After entertaining 106,000 patrons at various venues in Midway since 2009, theater company High Valley Arts is hoping to build a permanent home in Heber City, explained founder Sue Waldrip during the Heber City Council meeting on May 19.

High Valley Arts has no permanent facility in which to build sets or store props and costumes. It’s been a long 17 years of “hauling things” back and forth and “building on driveways,” Waldrip explained.

The solution? The High Valley Arts Performing Arts Center, including a 600-seat main theater, a 225-seat black box theater and two dance studios housing The Block Dance Studio and Primary Ballet Academy. The facilities would be available to rent by local performing arts organizations when they are not being used by High Valley Arts.

The organization is eyeing a 2.6-acre land parcel north of the corner of Fitzgerald Road and U.S. 40. High Valley Arts is hoping to annex the land into Heber City and build the performing arts center on the property. 

In return, High Valley Arts would enter into a shared parking agreement with the city. 

The performing arts center’s 406-stall parking lot would likely be shared by users of the public park and fire station planned just east of the property. The park and fire station are for Fitzgerald Farms, a planned residential development that will be built on 66 acres that were annexed into the city in 2022.

Unbeknownst to Waldrip and engineer Paul Berg before it was pointed out by Mayor Heidi Franco during the City Council meeting, the planned fire station cuts into a portion of the land for the performing arts center’s proposed parking lot, removing land for over 150 of the stalls.

Waldrip still hopes the proposed location can work out.

“Paul Berg now has the specifics that we were unaware of of the size of the fire station, and he is going to see if he can put sufficient parking on the remaining ground, which may cause us to lower our size of theater somewhat. It will be a balancing act. How small can we make that theater and still hope to survive financially?” she said. “Then, we’ll see whether we continue or don’t, or look for a different piece of property.”

Another consideration is the location of the Heber Valley bypass, which will divert traffic off of Heber City Main Street. 

Alternative A keeps traffic on U.S. 40 between Potters Lane and 900 North. Alternative B instead cuts through the North Fields wetland area between those two roads. Alternative A, Waldrip said, would take 1 acre off the land parcel where High Valley Arts hopes to build the performing arts center.

The Utah Department of Transportation announced its preference for Alternative B in January. UDOT hopes to finalize its route by the end of the year. Waldrip said High Valley Arts will not purchase the Heber City land parcel until UDOT finalizes its route.

These two setbacks are not the first the performing arts center has encountered. 

High Valley Arts has considered “four or five” sites in its hometown of Midway, including at the Homestead Resort, since 2018, Waldrip said. 

The most “viable” location, according to Waldrip, was on the south side of the East 300 Main Street block. High Valley Arts began eyeing that location in 2022. 

The Midway City Council had concerns about the proposed performing arts center that included its size, parking and potential traffic impacts. Before any site plan was approved, the land High Valley Arts hoped to build on was purchased by another buyer in December 2024.

“We were so distraught, we sent out an email that said, ‘That’s it. We’re folding up our tent,’” Waldrip recalled.

However, about three days later, Waldrip received an email that gave her the encouragement to continue her theater company. 

Sculptor Stephen Neal, who is the director of the Monument of the Americas, a Latter-day Saint sculpture garden to be located on 10 acres near Utah Valley University Wasatch campus, invited High Valley Arts to build an outdoor amphitheater on the property to put on summertime plays to attract visitors.

The Monument of the Americas is not fully planned out yet, so the promise of the outdoor amphitheater has not swayed Waldrip’s determination to find a year-round, permanent home for her theater company.

Not everyone in the local arts shares Waldrip’s vision. Wasatch County Arts Council President Pat Sweeney questioned if the performing arts center was really necessary in a public comment during the Heber City Council meeting. 

The Arts Council has been planning the Heber Valley Arts Center since December 2023. Planned for 4 acres east of the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus, the arts center could include an outdoor amphitheater, indoor theater and rehearsal, community and gallery spaces, though the Arts Council is still drawing up the layout and design. 

Heber City has invested in the project by entering into a 50-year lease with the Arts Council at a rate of $1 per year. The Arts Council hopes to open the arts center by the 2034 Winter Olympics.

Sweeney questioned why Waldrip, whom she described as a friend, refused to bring High Valley Arts under the roof of the Heber Valley Arts Center.

“Our creative community is only so large. Our creative community needs directors, talents. If we’re all pulling and pulling and pulling these people, we won’t have people to direct and fill all these venues,” Sweeney said.

Waldrip stood her ground, saying she wants a venue that is truly owned by High Valley Arts.

“There is a great difference between two kinds of theater. One theater is the resident theater, like Hale (Centre) Theatre. The other type of theater is more of a town hall facility, where it’s a building that multiple groups can come in and use. Both of those concepts function amazingly well in Salt Lake City,” she said. “They are not competitive.”

City Councilors Aaron Cheatwood and Yvonne Barney chimed in their agreement with Waldrip. Cheatwood said his children, who have both participated in community theater, have experienced the challenge of being unable to build a set in a rented venue until it is their turn to use the space.

“There is actually a need for multiple (venues). I know it seems crazy, but we’re filling most of these physical spaces already,” he said.

The City Council did not vote on the matter because of High Valley Arts’ need to redraw its plan for the performing arts center. The City Council did request that Waldrip and Sweeney continue discussions about their respective arts centers. 

City councilors’ reactions to the idea were overall positive, in no small part because the project would require no fiscal investment from the city.

“That’s really amazing and really wonderful to hear that you are so well funded,” Franco said. “So, of course, you can go forward (in redrawing the plan and bringing it back to the City Council), but it’s a matter of, ‘Is this the place?’ I’m not sure if this is going to be the place.”

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Ever since the Sundance Institute announced the film festival would move to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027, Park City Special Event Manager Chris Finney has been bombarded with phone calls from event organizers.

“Everyone’s calling me saying, ‘I’m here to save Park City (with a new January event),’” Finney said during a panel about local arts and culture at the Wasatch Back Economic Summit on Monday. “They’re talking about tens of thousands of people they want to bring in on day one.”

While Finney said the economic boon the festival brought to the Wasatch Back will be missed — particularly by local businesses like Park City Lock & Key, which always raked in cash from festivalgoers locking themselves out of their Airbnbs — it also put a strain on year-round residents and city resources.

“If you think about everything that happens during Sundance, there’s someone standing out in the cold, directing traffic or working a crosswalk or loading people into cars or standing in an intersection,” Finney said.

Jocelyn Scudder, executive director of the Arts Council of Park City & Summit County, said residents of the Wasatch Back should focus on establishing the next Sundance Institute instead of the next Sundance Film Festival. In other words, she sees greater potential in the creation of spaces for artists than events to draw in tourists.

“We are very heavily reliant on these big events: Sundance, Kimball Arts Festival, Savor the Summit,” she said. “If we’re able to have these really amazing spaces for arts and culture and activity and experiences to happen, then we will see 12-month, year-round activity act more as kindling for the local community, rather than these high-impact events that are great for our economy, but they’re hard on our community.”

One of those spaces could be the Heber Valley Arts Center planned for east of the Utah Valley University Wasatch campus, encompassing an outdoor amphitheater, indoor theater and rehearsal, community and gallery spaces. The Wasatch County Arts Council hopes to build the arts center by the 2034 Winter Olympics. 

Phil Jordan, co-chair of the Heber City Arts Advisory Committee and an executive at entertainment company Next Level Ops, said the Wasatch Back’s greatest need is rehearsal space for artists.

“It is, generally, across the United States, the debit that is always identified first and generally supported last because it doesn’t generate a return on investment,” he said. 

He added that the Heber Valley Arts Center will bring a “rising tide” for Wasatch Back residents, who will be able to express themselves authentically in the new space. That, he said, will attract new residents to both counties.

Scudder said Summit County residents are excited about the Heber Valley Arts Center.

“I’ve heard from a lot of artists who’ve caught wind of that and (are) like, ‘Well, maybe I’ll go down there and exhibit,’ or ‘Maybe I’ll go down there and perform,’” she said. 

While the Heber Valley Arts Center is a long way from breaking ground, Heber City’s arts and culture scene is growing rapidly, explained Rachel Kahler, executive director of nonprofit Community Alliance for Main Street.

Kahler has a contract with Heber City to organize at least 50 local events in Main Street Park annually. The city’s goal is to build up to 250 events annually. 

Kahler has taken the advice of Park Silly Sunday Market Executive Director Kate McChesney: “Be mindful of what you’re doing and don’t grow too fast.”

Park City Councilor Tana Toly provided Savor the Summit as an example of an event that has grown into a tourist event rather than one for locals.

“We can’t afford to go do that, and so, we’re looking at other events during the summer,” she said.

Kahler said organizers need to recognize the pressures events can put on local communities. She provided Ice Castles — which she was previously marketing manager of — as an example. 

Ice Castles started in Midway’s town square in 2011. 

“If you remember back then, they basically took over downtown,” she said. “Every neighborhood was angry because, instead of Swiss Days, which takes over for two days, they had seven weeks of lines and people and parking.”

Ice Castles then moved to the Homestead Resort and later Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in response to resident feedback. The attraction became beloved and brought an influx of economic activity for small business owners, like David Medina, owner of Lola’s Street Kitchen.

“David told me those first couple years, he had such a small restaurant. But because of the Ice Castles, it kept him in business to (the point) where he now is a destination restaurant,” Kahler said. “These are factors that you can’t often gauge with data, but you can with relationships.”

Kahler’s example represents how arts and cultural events can provide economic spillover for local businesses. But the benefits of the arts aren’t purely economic, Scudder said. 

“Creating art and experiencing art is what makes us distinctly human, and it allows us to connect,” she said. “It not only supports our community, but it supports our well being as people. I hope that people think of arts as a social investment.”

Ciara Steele from the Utah Arts Collective said the organization’s Nutcracker Tea Party demonstrates that. Every year, the Utah Arts Collective collaborates with local businesses — for example, Midway’s Dandelion Gelato — and donates all proceeds to the Wasatch County Children’s Justice Center, which provides services to children undergoing the child abuse investigative process.

“We’re all working together, and there’s a local benefit,” Steele said. “We educate our dancers about what the (Children’s Justice Center) provides, so they understand what they’re serving with their talent. The parents get behind that, and the community does, (too).”

The post Wasatch Back arts leaders talk pros and cons of big events like Sundance Film Festival  appeared first on Park Record.

For artist Jill Pelto, painting provides a creative way to communicate with her audience about changing climates, evolving landscapes and communities. On Saturday, she will present her work, “Mountains Made of Data: Sharing Science Stories through Art,” at Sundance Mountain Resort. 

It’s all part of Sundance Resort’s Voices of Nature artist series, which highlights environmental filmmakers, authors and artists. Pelto’s is the third presentation of the series. 

Pelto calls her work “environmental art.”

“Basically, it will incorporate data into my art as a way to visualize and understand that,” Pelto said. “It has one foot in the fine art realm, but it’s also trying to tell a breakdown of these side stories and tell them in a way that includes emotion and openness that art can have.”

Pelto, who is based in Washington, focuses her art on stories around snowpack and water. But she makes art featuring different landscapes as well. She adds science-backed data into her art to prompt understanding of the risks to those landscapes. 

In some pieces, Pelto highlights rivers with data showing the temperatures over time. 

“Kind of telling the story about (why) in dry, warm summer months we need the snow in the mountains, and then, in this area, the glaciers as well, to really supplement the water,” Pelto said. 

Some works show ecosystems that are affected by rising sea levels, and others depict communities that are working to mitigate those climate changes. 

“Obviously, whether that’s recreation or farming, there are all these ripple effects that we’re all really starting to feel,” Pelto said.

As the art director of the North Cascade Glacier Climate Project — an effort that monitors North Cascade glaciers and streams — Pelto also calls herself a “science communicator.” She said she originally made the connection between science and art because they are her two biggest passions in life. 

“Art was always a big part of my life. I think I kind of had that in my bones,” Pelto said. “And then science, I think, really came from the way that I was raised.”

Pelto said she has spent plenty of time outside camping and hiking. Her dad, in particular, has a background in science and exposed her to the world of glaciers. Every summer, the pair researches glaciers in Washington. 

“I think getting to see stuff like that as a kid just really inspired me,” Pelto said.

Sundance Nature Alliance Acting Director Emily Moench said the Voices of Nature series is about telling stories that connect people to nature and the natural world. 

“Which we hope inspires people to care about the Earth, which, in turn, comes full circle when they take action and care for the Earth,” Moench said. 

Moench said she has seen the series prompt action before. Last fall, Sundance Nature Alliance hosted filmmaker Abby Ellis, who showed part of her film depicting the climate crisis facing the Great Salt Lake. 

“We had several people follow up to say they didn’t realize how dire the situation is and that they’re implementing changes in how they use water, and listen to our recommendations about how to conserve water,” Moench said. 

The goal is to encourage people to care about the environment, she said, adding that art often has that effect on viewers. 

Pelto said environmental art certainly has had that impact on her. 

“I think art can help. It can help share that and process that, and not with the goal of overwhelming people. More, the goal of sharing the emotions — that is something that so many of us are experiencing,” Pelto said. 

Pelto’s presentation with the Voices of Nature artist series at Sundance Mountain Resort will be held in the screening room at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets to the event can be found at sundancenaturealliance.org.

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