Public Art Project Wake the Great Salt Lake Addresses Environmental Crisis Through Art

Measuring in at an average depth of little more than 10 feet deep, Utah’s capital city namesake is shrinking toward a quiet demise. Each year, the Great Salt Lake loses an average of 1.2 million acre-feet of water, and is 6.9 million acre-feet short of minimum levels considered healthy. The fallout of a vanished lake ripples across every corner of Utah life—from city dwellers who will breathe toxic lakebed dust, to skiers who will recall powder days only as fading memories, to the 12 million migratory birds forced to seek new places to refuel on their long journeys. Some experts suggest the Great Salt Lake could dry up within the next five years. And so we ask: How do we, as a community, rise to meet this moment? How can each of us enact real change? How do we save the Great Salt Lake? These are the questions that Salt Lake City Arts Council’s public art project, Wake the Great Salt Lake, is aiming to answer. 

Wake the Great Salt Lake (WGSL) is one of eight programs awarded a $1 million dollar grant by Bloomberg Philanthropies, joining cities like Atlanta, Orlando, Phoenix and Houston. Each grant recipient selects an urgent civic issue to address through a series of temporary public art projects, this year’s topics include inequality in healthcare, perceptions of homelessness, and rising temperatures in urban environments. For the Salt Lake City Arts Council, responding to the persistent drought threatening to dry out the Great Salt Lake became a driving force. But instead of approaching the issue through a lens of fear and dread, Wake the Great Salt Lake focuses on values of hope, and unity. “When you’re presented with a great existential issue like the decline of the lake, it’s really easy to lose hope,” says WGSL Project Lead Andrew Shaw. “But artists help us to imagine positive futures. They help us see not only what we’re losing, but what we’re saving—what we’re restoring.” 

To inspire such positive visions, WGSL has spent the last year collaborating with local and international artists on a series of 12 temporary installations. “We wanted to focus on maximum diversity by representing as many artistic mediums as possible, artists of all stages of their careers and from all geographic locations across Salt Lake,” Shaw explains. Each local activation engages with the viewer in its own unique way; some invite the spectators to physically interact with the installation, while others use the power of storytelling to connect with audiences from the stage. 

Most of the installations have already happened. Artist Nick Pederson’s May-June installment, “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow,” consisted of giant billboards displaying photorealistic depictions of two very different outcomes for the Great Salt Lake—one with abundant water and a thriving ecosystem, and another marked by toxic dust storms and aridification. Acclaimed interdisciplinary artist Mitsu Salmon presented a site-responsive dance performance at Miller Bird Refuge and Nature Park, blending dance, soundscape and visual storytelling. Taking place over four days, “Feathered Tides” guided audiences through the park as dancers embodied movements of Great Salt Lake shorebirds. Another visual artist, Kellie Bornhoft, consulted with the Great Salt Lake Institute and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to identify and illustrate 64 species that depend on the lake. Printed on sheer fabric banners, viewers flipped through the images of birds, insects, plants and more, observing how the transparent material interconnected them. 

An ongoing collaboration between three Salt Lakers, Han Calder, Nick Carpenter and Ben Doxey, the Great Salt Lake Hopeline is a mobile phone booth and dial-in hotline that invites callers to record their memories, hopes and fears for the lake. Marked by bright pink lettering, the phone booth will appear at events across the city throughout 2025, but callers can dial in to 979-GSL-HOPE to leave their messages, and listen to sounds of the lake itself. 

Coming soon, Plan-B Theatre will present two original shows for a range of audiences. Eb & Flo follows a capricious flamingo who longs for adventure, and a pragmatic seagull who frets over the shrinking lake. Together, they find a way to spread word about the Great Salt Lake, and inspire messages of small actions with big effects. Created for grades K-3, this show will tour elementary schools across the state during the 2025-2026 school year, and offer free public performances on select dates in October. Suitable for older audience members, the Great Salt Lake takes human form in Plan-B’s Just Add Water. The climate-fiction dramedy tells the story of nature spirits, open mics, humans, dust and hope. Audiences can catch performances from Oct. 2-19, see planbtheatre.org for performance times. 

As the first phase of Wake the Great Salt Lake comes to a conclusion, Shaw is excited to finish the public art challenge with a bang. The organization has commissioned a notable artist to draw some attention from the international arts community, though Shaw couldn’t announce the partnership at the time of our interview. “It’s going to be a big splashy spectacle,” he teases. “We’re hoping to draw the eyes of the national and international arts and environmental communities to what’s happening at the Great Salt Lake.” 

At its core, Wake the Great Salt Lake invites the community to take part in a conversation. A conversation that isn’t just about what we’ll lose if the lake disappears, but what we will gain if we save it. “I hope everyone who encounters one of these artworks is not only inspired, but also leaves with a sense of purpose. We all have a part in this conversation.” 

Visit Wakegsl.org to learn more about upcoming installations, and follow them on Instagram for the latest updates @wakegsl

Wake the Great Salt Lake recently teamed up with cocktail bar Post Office Place to design a drink with a purpose! Check it out in our 2025 Farm-to-Glass Cocktail Contest.

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