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.

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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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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

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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).”

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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.”

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If the witty banter between cast and crew members behind the scenes is any indication, Heber City theater company Charitable Acts Theatre’s production of Larry Shue’s 1984 comedy “The Foreigner” is going to be a riot. 

“The first priority is to make everybody laugh so hard that they pee their pants,” joked director David Thorpe. “So, we’re going to be handing out bottles of water and try to have everybody be really hydrated so that those with the weakest bladders can help us meet our goal.”

The premise of “The Foreigner” ensures that it’ll be easy to laugh at.

The play follows an Englishman, Charlie Baker, who visits a lodge in Georgia for a weekend trip. Feeling shy and depressed, Baker pretends to be a foreigner from a fictional country who doesn’t know English — a very reasonable excuse to get out of socializing.

Actor Gary Page said playing Baker is, in many ways, a breeze. He barely speaks, and when he does, his lines are complete gibberish. If he flubs a word, he can just make up the next one. You can’t do that in Shakespeare.

It’s a very physical role, characterized by facial expressions and exaggerated body language. That’s resulted in a fair amount of chaos. During rehearsals, Page jumped from a table and collided straight into the ceiling.

“Full leg spring into the thing, and you watched his head collapse into his rib cage,” Thorpe laughed. “And he landed, and everybody was like, ‘All right, so your next line is …’”

Probably the trickiest thing for Page to pull off will be a three-page monologue written in gibberish, performed in a way so that the audience comprehends the monologue’s meaning despite it not making a lick of sense. 

As Baker pretends not to understand English, people become much more loose-lipped around him. As a result, Baker learns all kinds of gossip and even discovers a plot by members of the Ku Klux Klan to take over the lodge as a new gathering place. 

Some theater companies have chosen to remove the Klan storyline, but the crew at Charitable Acts Theatre felt it was important to carry on the play’s original mission of pointing out the horror and absurdity of racism.

The cast and crew were inspired by a quote by 17th-century French playwright Molière: “The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.”

The play is rich with mature themes, including unwanted pregnancy, xenophobia and the fetishization of foreign cultures, but comedy makes these themes easily digestible for a general audience.

“I think (the audience) will be reminded of things that are happening that are current events in America and out of America, but they won’t feel like they’re being talked down to or lectured to,” Thorpe said. “It will feel relevant and pertinent, but it will feel fun, and that’s the most important thing. This show is designed to be fun, to remind us to enjoy each other and to enjoy community.”

Community is central not just to the script, but to Charitable Acts Theatre as a venture. The theater company was founded in 2022 with the mission of giving all proceeds to local charities. 

Founder Carrie Zabaldo began her theater journey in childhood, but her passion fell to the wayside while raising her children in Oregon. There, she began volunteering with a bevy of charities. By the time she moved to Heber City, she knew she wanted to start a charity of her own, all while getting in touch with her thespian roots.

Production costs for Charitable Acts Theatre productions are covered by grants, including Wasatch County Trails, Arts and Parks tax grants, as well as a haunted house fundraiser in October. That means truly every penny spent on a ticket is going directly to charity.

Over five productions, Charitable Acts Theatre has raised over $72,000 for organizations including The Horse of Many Colors, Wasatch Community Foundation, Peace House and the Midway Playhouse.

All proceeds made from ticket sales for “The Foreigner” will go to the Wasatch County Children’s Justice Center, which provides services to children undergoing the child abuse investigative process.

“The Foreigner” runs Friday through March 28 at the Ideal Playhouse in Heber City. Learn more and purchase tickets at hebercat.org.

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