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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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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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.”

The post Proposed performing arts center auditions to Heber City Council — and gets a callback appeared first on Park Record.

Timpanogos Valley Theatre President Trudi Harter was on the Wasatch County Arts Council in 2022, when voters were considering approving a 10th of a percent local sales and use tax, called the Trails, Arts and Parks tax. She lobbied for it in any way she could: signage, flyers and conversations. 

Her efforts were successful. Voters approved the tax; it went into effect in 2023; and the first grants for trails, arts and parks projects funded by the revenue were awarded in 2024. 

Wasatch County, Midway and Heber City each have their own grant programs funded by the revenue. The Heber City Council on Tuesday awarded nearly $120,000 to 12 arts-specific projects of the 14 that applied, following the recommendation of an advisory committee. Each project is matched by at least 25% funding.

Timpanogos Valley Theatre received two grants to fund the production costs — including costuming, royalties and advertising — for two plays. 

“Possessive! The Musical!” a family-friendly, pop punk-flavored comedy about demonic possession premiering in American Fork this week, will come to Heber City Sept. 3-5. Timpanogos Valley Theatre received about $5,000 to summon the production. 

“That’s one of the points of our mission statement, is to support new and upcoming playwrights,” Harter said.

Timpanogos Valley Theatre also received a $12,000 sponsorship of “1776: The Musical,” which plays June 24 through July 4 in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

The funds will be vital in gathering hard-to-find revolutionary period costuming and wigs, which will also be used in the city’s Fourth of July parade, Harter said. The grant will also make it possible to donate 100 tickets to veterans and active military personnel through Black Rifle Coffee Company, she said.

“The grants do help offset that, and then we can all be more generous with everybody, and everybody wins,” she added.

Before the Trails, Arts and Parks tax was passed for Heber, Harter said, “If we received grants, we would get a grant for, like, $1,000 or $1,500.” So the Trails, Arts and Parks tax grants have been a game-changer, she said.

In 2024, the theater received a $20,000 grant from the county to replace the worn-out, nearly two-decade-old plywood stage in its building, which is a historic amusement hall the theater moved into in 2010.

“We thought we could do it ourselves, but in hindsight, no way,” she said. “It’s wonderful to have a new stage that will last us a long time.”

The largest grant given this year was $25,000 to the Wasatch Community Foundation to help install two monuments honoring Timpanogos Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah. That’s in addition to a $10,000 Trails, Arts and Parks grant from the county.

The first, a new grave marker for his son, Tom Tabby, was installed in the Heber City Cemetery earlier this month. 

The second, a statue of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah created by Wyoming artist Jonathan LaBenne, soon will be installed on the roundabout near the city columbarium. The unveiling was originally scheduled for Memorial Day, but LaBenne had a concussion after falling from a ladder and needs time to recover, explained Wasatch Community Foundation Treasurer Marvin Rust.

The two projects’ overall cost is $50,000, Rust said.

Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah lived through violent conflict between Native American tribes and Latter-day Saint pioneers, including the Black Hawk War from 1865 to 1872. 

Although the church had placed an extermination order on all male Timpanogos in 1850, Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah remained a lifelong advocate for peace, signing a treaty with Heber City Bishop Joseph Stacy Murdock in 1867. 

Rust spearheaded the project because he was passionate about “do(ing) more to honor the Indigenous people that were here in this valley” and to acknowledge that “this was theirs first.” He has been in conversation with some of Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah’s descendents and got their consent before going ahead with the projects.

Heber City’s nearly $120,000 grant funding in arts projects is nearly double what was allotted. Heber City typically uses 10% of its total Trails, Arts and Parks revenue — this year, $66,000 — for arts grants.

The city had also already planned on spending some Trails, Arts and Parks revenue on some projects, like the Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah statue, regardless of whether a grant was submitted. That’s why the City Council agreed to fund all 12 projects and figure out where each falls under the umbrella later.

Additionally, the City Council unanimously approved to increase funding of the arts grants program from 10% of the city’s total Trails, Arts and Parks tax revenue to 15% in its next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

“We made this arbitrary decision to give 10% to the arts as Heber City. There was no objectivity in that. It was a lowball, conservative, safe percentage. ‘We’ll throw 10% at the arts, and then we get to distribute the other 90%.’ I always thought that was too chintzy,” said City Councilor Mike Johnston, adding that he is not a creative person himself but appreciates the value arts adds to a community.

City Councilor Morgan Murdock agreed.

“Arts can change lives, and it’s had a really big impact on my family. Every single one of my children has performed on these stages and helped out backstage,” he began, choking up. “I love parks. I love trails. But arts is important. It’s powerful.”

Here are the 12 projects that received funds, totaling $119,774.

• Wasatch Community Foundation’s Chief Tabby-To-Kwanah Statue: $25,000
• Community Alliance for Main Street’s Music on Main: $19,612
• Main Street Entertainment’s Heber Tourist Shows: $17,000
• Red, White & Blue Festival’s Free Community Music Programming: $12,000
• Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s “1776: The Musical”: $12,000
• Wasatch County Senior Center’s Senior Arts Project Classes: $7,387.50
• Heber City Historic Preservation’s Home Tour Addition: $6,626.20
• Wasatch County Library’s Community Concert Series: $5,100
• Commemorative Air Force Museum’s Signage and Crowd Control: $5,000
• Timpanogos Valley Theatre’s “Possessive! The Musical!”: $4,999
• Community Alliance for Main Street’s Hello Heber Mural: $2,850
• Heber Valley Children’s Choir’s “Sing for America”: $2,200

The post Heber City increases funding for arts grant program, backs $120,000 worth of projects appeared first on Park Record.

The energy at Wasatch High School Latinos in Action’s celebration of cultures showcase on Friday instantly topped that of many live shows. 

There was no awkward head-bobbing or distracted chatting from the crowd packed into the school auditorium. Instead, there were screams of support from parents holding bouquets, dancing in the audience and cheering that rivaled the Super Bowl. 

When Wasatch High School ninth grader and resident hype man Jafet Farías wandered on stage in a blazer and sunglasses to belt out Don Omar’s 2010 hit “Danza Kuduro” for the first act, the entire auditorium lit up with phone flashlights dancing like a swarm of excited fireflies.

Timpagonos Middle School student Salome Urquijo was a tad more timid than Farías was. 

Wearing a colorful traditional Mexican dress and flower crown, the 12-year-old student danced with the girls in Andres Caceres’ Latinos in Action class. Meanwhile, the boys donned masks resembling elderly men and sombreros, which they twirled on canes like spinning plates during the Michoacán folk dance Danza de los Viejitos (Dance of the Little Old Men).

Urquijo said they planned the dance for a year, but she still had stage fright.

“There are so many people here,” she said beforehand. “It’s people bigger than me, and I feel nervous.”

Wasatch High School Latinos in Action teacher Ana Alejandre said giving students a safe space to share their talents was one of the reasons she founded the cultural showcase four years ago.

“There’s a teacher friend of mine. She said, ‘This, for some kids, is going to be the only time that they really perform in their life on a stage where they have this many people watching them,'” Alejandre said. “Just to see them feeling so proud up there, it’s like, ‘Yes. That’s what we’re here to do.'”

Alejandre also founded the cultural showcase to foster interest in Wasatch High School’s Latinos in Action class.

Latinos in Action is a national program focused on empowering Latino youth through four pillars: leveraging personal and cultural assets, excelling in education, serving the community and developing leadership skills. Wasatch High School’s Latinos in Action class was founded about a decade ago, with Alejandre beginning to teach it four years ago.

“The first year that I taught Latinos in Action, none of this was happening. … Kids didn’t sign up for (Latinos in Action). I had to invite students to join,” Alejandre said. 

But once the group started holding the annual cultural showcase four years ago, kids became interested in the class. The showcase itself became wildly popular, with Alejandre estimating that this year’s crowd was three times the size of the first showcase’s. 

There were a few poetry and vocal performances, like the guitar-strumming and serenading of Wasatch High School senior Yandell Parra’s three-man band, Grupo CLAY, but the bulk of performances were dance numbers.

A standout performance was by a group featuring Wasatch High School alumni Milly Vieyra and Mayra Castro. The group performed a dance popular during July festivities in Guerrero, Mexico, when residents celebrate the saint Sr. Santiago Apostol. 

The group wore heavy, handmade sombreros that looked as if they were made of orange flowers, as well as wooden masks that distort their voices to sound deeper when they yell. They danced to a repetitive flute and drum melody, stomping the ground to represent growing flowers and cracking whips to imitate lightning.

“Every dance has a story behind it,” Castro said. “We’re basically representing the farmers.”

It wasn’t just students and alumni who danced, but school district employees, too.

High school counselor Angie Orjuela-Beltran performed a dance number with her fiance, father and mother. 

“Sometimes resources are not available for (students) because of the language. So, the job that they are doing helping them is amazing. I really love and admire my daughter,” said Angie’s father, Carlos Orjuela. 

Dance became a staple of the Orjuela family as soon as they immigrated to the United States about 20 years ago.

“We were not dancers before, but then, when we came, basically, we realized that dance is something that is joining the family together,” he said. “We enjoy it. So we dance on every occasion that we have the opportunity.”

Assistant High School Principal McKenzie Neiufi also performed a dance number with her family, though they had much less practice, according to her husband, Amoni. He learned about the showcase earlier that evening, when he’d just gotten home from work. The family practiced for about an hour before they were thrust into the spotlight. 

The Neiufis performed a Polynesian dance number to “Mate Ma’a Tonga” by Tupou Loto’aniu and made it through about half of the dance onstage. 

“There’s still more to that dance,” Amoni said. “Maybe next year, we’ll do the whole thing.”

The Neiufis’ performance was an example of how the culture night was for everyone, despite being organized by Latinos in Action. 

Junior Aim Jivon got the crowd clapping along as she sang Thai pop songs, while sophomore Daigh Marshall performed Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” in American Sign Language as twelfth grader Avery Green jammed on the piano. 

For Alejandre, the “culture” in culture night refers to Wasatch High School’s culture as well.

She grew up in Ogden after her family immigrated to the United States from Michoacán, Mexico, when she was 8 years old. She estimated that her family was one of five immigrant families in her school district. There certainly wasn’t a cultural showcase back then; her heritage felt like a secret she had to keep. 

When she began teaching in the school district, she was pleasantly surprised by the number of Hispanic students and the variety of cultures students came from.

“You can see that kids are just into it. They want other people to see. They want to show what they know because it’s hard to any other place,” Alejandre said. “That’s part of the school.”

The post Wasatch County students celebrate culture in artistic showcase appeared first on Park Record.

The departure of the Sundance Film Festival weighed heavily Friday over a panel of five Park City arts leaders at the annual Park City Leadership Symposium. 

Ben Anderson, founder of Park City Song Summit, called the festival the “fair-haired child” of Park City’s arts scene that “gave us the one-fingered salute” and disowned the family. He and the other panelists contemplated how Sundance’s siblings in the Park City arts scene might fill the void left by the festival.

For Katy Wang, executive director of Park City Film, the biggest void left by the Sundance Film Festival that she hopes to fill is inspiring Park City’s youth. 

“My kids, growing up here, are saying all of these stories that they got exposed to are spreading their imaginations, sparking that creativity and (making them) go, ‘I could be that,’” she said.

Jamie Wilcox, executive director of Egyptian YouTheatre, agreed.

“We cannot talk about centering the arts if we’re not talking about giving these opportunities to young people,” she said.

She added that not all children will grow up to be artists — some may even work jobs that don’t exist yet, particularly due to advances in AI — but that the skills children gain by being grounded in the arts are essential. 

“Our kids are coming back and telling us, ‘It helps me with interviews. It helps me speak up for myself and others. It helps me collaborate,’” she said. “If these aren’t skills we’re teaching them and in a fun way, we’re giving them a disadvantage in their future.”

Meanwhile, Brian Richards, executive director of Mountain Town Music, thought the biggest void the festival left was the presentation of art that takes creative risks or discusses difficult subject matters, challenging perspectives and sparking conversations.

“I’m not sure that we, as an arts and cultural collective, are doing enough right now to continue to shape those future discussions,” he said.

He then brought up musical plants.

“I had a thing come across my desk. This artist was going to bring in a bunch of plants, and they were going to connect microphones to the plants, and they were going to create music,” he recalled.

But he couldn’t think of a suitable venue for the artist. 

That led straight into a discussion of arts spaces, or the lack thereof, in Park City. 

Jocelyn Scudder, executive director of the Arts Council of Park City and Summit County and moderator of the panel, pointed out that the need for such spaces was outlined in the Arts & Culture Master Plan created by the Arts Council, which was approved by the Park City and Summit County councils earlier this year.

Anderson said he hopes that manifests in the form of a facility similar to the Center for the Arts in Crested Butte, Colorado. The Center for the Arts was established in 1985 to revive the ski town, and in 2019, a new, 28,000-square-foot building was opened, costing about $20 million.

“They do food and wine festival outdoors. They do a summer concert music series outdoors. Indoors, they do art, music, drama. They have culture. There’s 1,600 people in Crested Butte. What are we doing?” Anderson asked. “We are so far behind. We are so lacking.”

Richards agreed. He asked whether anyone regularly saw live music on Main Street. A few raised their hands. 

He then asked where people see live music most. People shouted out venues like The Marquis and The Spur. Richards pointed out that those were venues for patrons 21 and older and emphasized the need for spaces for youth musicians. 

He added that Park City live music is “beholden” to the whims of ski resorts during the winter, which tend to host only DJs.

Anderson described bringing live music to Park City as “an uphill, Sisyphean battle because we don’t have the space.”

Wrapping up the panel, Scudder asked each panelist how they wanted to look back on the arts scene 10 years from now.

“In this town, we always joke that you could throw a stick and hit an Olympian. I would love to be able to throw a stick and hit an artist,” Wang said. 

All agreed that they wanted further investment in the arts scene, diversifying Park City’s portfolio so the tourism industry can survive even during warm winters.

But for that investment to happen, words have to turn into actions.

“I have been in so many of these meetings, going back to sitting up at the loft of the costume area at the Egyptian Theatre with Randy Barton, trying to outline how we could move forward as an arts and cultural society. All we’ve done for 15 years is talk about it. We need each and every one of you in this room to pursue action now,” Richards said. 

“I don’t know how much we have talked about AI today, but we are at a critical junction, and we are going to experience a lot of pain. And there is no way around that,” he continued. “And we are going to need one another. We’re going to need artists. We’re going to need community. … When we are sitting here in 2036, we’re going to say, ‘We did it. We provided joy. We provided community gatherings. We contributed to the wellness of our community.’”

The post Park City arts leaders envision a post-Sundance future appeared first on Park Record.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on Thursday when I walked into Gallery MAR on Park City’s Main Street for an evening of painting using rubbing alcohol, ink, gin and whiskey, but I didn’t think I’d be blowing air out of a straw instead of using one to sip a drink. 

A group of writers and editors for publications including Park City Magazine, Salt Lake Magazine and yours truly, The Park Record, was hunched around a table over slick sheets of Yupo paper, each huffing and puffing into the plastic straws with all our might. As we did, rubbing alcohol and drops of ink flew to the corners of the paper like balls on a billiard table. 

Sure, it was art, but it was more of a science experiment. Manipulating the movements of liquid was physics. Making the alcoholic ink dance from chemical reactions to drops of gin and whiskey was chemistry. And the result, many paintings looking like cross-sections of geodes, was geology.

The scientific aspect was the initial appeal of the art form for our teacher, Salt Lake City-based artist Briar West. 

A former medical researcher, her mind is all math and science. She conducted clinical trials testing medications for allergies and asthma until three years ago, when she started doing art full-time. But the art began much more like one of West’s clinical trials.

She divorced over a decade ago and began to realize she was bored during the evenings.

“You can only watch so much TV,” she joked. 

So, during a trip to an art supply store, she bought some alcohol inks on a whim. That’s when she began her experiments, diluting the inks with rubbing alcohol, fingernail polish remover and even brake fluid, just to see how the inks would react.

“I was having a good old time, and I noticed myself staying up all night. I wasn’t trying to make art. I just realized (that) when I was done, I felt better. It was kind of like a meditation hack,” she said. 

As the hack became a habit, she showed her cousin the results. She asked West for a custom painting to hang on her wall. That was when West realized that her experimentation had gone beyond chemistry or therapy — it had become art.   

“It never dawned on me,” she said. “I can’t draw a figure to save my life.”

She jumped onto Instagram in 2016 and began amassing a following. 

But crisis struck four years later when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and rubbing alcohol began flying off of store shelves almost as fast as toilet paper. 

In search of a solution (or perhaps liquid consolation), West rushed to the liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka. And thus, her obsession with combining ink and spirits in her artwork was born. 

Her operation has only become more extreme over the years. Instead of using a straw to move the liquids around for larger pieces, she uses a blow dryer or even a leaf blower. 

Perhaps the most extreme example of West’s experimentation was when she got “overly curious” and drew her own blood — something she’d become an expert at through clinical trials. 

Combining the blood with red ink so it wouldn’t turn brown, she created a series called “We All Bleed the Same Blood,” which she donated to the Salt Lake City location of Encircle, a nonprofit serving Utah’s LGBTQ+ youth and young adults.

While drawing blood was her favorite part of clinical trials, the job came with the stress of precision, no room for error. For West, part of the appeal of painting with ink and alcohol is letting go of control. Stains can be layered, and smears can be reimagined as seemingly deliberate strokes.

“I’m not going to say no to you,” she said at the beginning of the class. “You’re going to say, ‘Should we do this?’ The answer is going to be yes.”

Though she’s worked with many liquids, vodka is still West’s favorite, both to drink and to paint with. 

“When I do a big piece, I’ll have the hair dryer on full blast, and I’ll have my big bottle of vodka. And I put my thumb over it, and I let it go a little bit, and it just sprays. And that’s how I get this big ocean effect on the bigger pieces,” she explained.

As for us students, we painted using spirits from Park City’s Alpine Distilling — though we didn’t consume them until the class was over and we’d moved to the Alpine Distilling Social Aid & Pleasure Club.

“We love Utah laws,” joked owner Sara Sergent.

It wasn’t until I was sipping an old fashioned when I realized I’d been painting with Alpine Distilling’s baby, the Triple Oak whiskey, ranked the best American whiskey of all time by “Enthusiast Report.” 

The Triple Oak is Alpine’s Utah Straight bourbon whiskey, aged at least an additional year in a barrel made of American and French oaks. A 750 mL bottle goes for $180.

I nearly choked when I realized I’d been wasting a few of its precious drops on my amateur attempt at artwork. 

To her credit, West was very generous in her evaluation of my piece. She said personalities shine through in each painting and guessed that I’m a thoughtful, extroverted introvert from my composition and use of orange. 

West recalled a class she had given at her home to a mother and her daughters. They forgot their artworks, so the next day, the father came to pick them up.

“He showed up and said, ‘Well, that’s my wife, and that one’s this daughter’s, this daughter’s and this daughter’s.’ And he was right,” West recalled.

West’s class on Thursday was the first she held at Gallery MAR, though she has no current plans for additional classes there specifically. She does host classes regularly at the Alpine Distilling Social Aid & Pleasure Club (where drinking while painting is permitted) and is also available for private booking. Learn more at alpineparkcity.com and briarweststudio.com.

The post A spirited evening of painting with Briar West  appeared first on Park Record.