Pop Up Installations | Red Rock Arts Fest

Pop-Up Performances & Installations and Community Murals

Moab Arts put out a call for temporary, outdoor projects to be performed or installed in downtown Moab during the festival. Projects were chosen with a focus on community engagement and public participation, aiming to incite playfulness and feed the public imagination.

Check them out as you explore Moab during the weekend of the festival.

Douglas Tolman, "Where are you?"

In November 2021, a nomadic interpretive kiosk embarked on a journey to places of ecological, hyrdological, and cultural significance in the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River Watersheds. Rather than presenting those who encounter it with a didactic statement such as "You are here," the kiosk invites inquiry-based participation with the prompt "Where are you?" and artmaking supplies.

When using maps, we see the world through the lens of government agencies and software companies that create them. The intricate stories and nuanced histories that make a place important are often overlooked to meet the mapmakers agenda. Through inquiry, this kiosk attempts to return mapmaking to the people, with hopes that a deeper sense of place will strengthen connections with our home bioregions.

Find "Where are you?" at the following locations:

10/6 Arts & Ag: A Moab Market at Swanny City Park, 5pm-6:30pm, 100 W 400 N

10/7 Moab Food Truck Park, 11:30am-1:30pm, 39 W 100 N

10/8 Street Fest, 3pm-4:30pm, on the street on 100 North between 100 E and 200 E

10/9 City Market, 11:30am-1:00pm, 425 S Main Street

Emily Arntsen and Sarah Lewiecki, Wishing Well

Based loosely on a wishing well, this sculpture intends to engage the community through offerings and wishes. Water pours down a series of shelves where vessels catch the water and overflow onto the next to signify that we have as much as we need, nothing more, and that this bounty is a gift, not a given. People are invited to leave offerings on the shelves so that their objects may be blessed by the water.

Visit the wishing well at the Moab Information Center, 10/6-10/9, 25 E Center St

Douglas Tolman

Douglas Tolman (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist practicing in the Great Salt Lake and Colorado River Watersheds. He believes a sense of place is the strongest tool we have for fixing the West’s socio-ecological issues. Residing in the space between sculpture and image, his art practice is informed by place-based youth education, ecology, and human-powered movement. He is currently in MFA Candidacy at the University of Utah and a recent recipient of the Frankenthaler Climate Art Award. With his practice, he hopes to facilitate a sense of place within his community through inquiry-based art and community projects.

Website: https://douglastolman.com/

Sarah Lewiecki

Sarah Lewiecki creates oil paintings in a multitude of unique forms that incorporate her distinct lexicon of symbols and iconography. Her work fuses beauty with wretchedness in order to reveal their harmony. She brings a variety of mediums into her practice as a painter, including the traditionally male dominated craft of woodworking, masonry, and ironworking. Lewiecki has recently exhibited work at the Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, CA, Below Grand Gallery in New York, NY, Telluride Arts, Telluride, CO and at the Silver Bell Mine in Ophir, CO. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and Telluride, CO.

Website: www.sarahlewiecki.com

Instagram: @svnlew_studio

Emily Arntsen

Emily Arntsen is a writer living in Moab, Utah, where the landscape is not merely the settign of her work, but often the main subject. Though she is not an artist by trade, she is the daughter of a carpenter and has inherited her father's proclivity for working with one's hands. She grew up in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, and while she misses the ocean dearly, she feels at home in the ancient seabed that is now the Utah desert.

Website: emilyarntsen.com

Pete Apicella aka PiMo

Pete "PiMo" Apicella is a Moab based Artist, Designer, Ecologist, and Dude on Bike. Mostly well known for his brightly colored FunScape Murals throughout town, he also dabbles in upcycled sculptures using Natural, Unwanted, and Found Object materials. There is a redemptive story in these repurposed constructions. "Part of my creative mission is to restore a personalized touch to industrial and abandoned spaces. Another purpose is to toss color at an increasingly greying and homogenizing world. I slightly fear that as a local artist helping Moab look and seem cool, that I am inadvertently gentrifying myself out of the neighborhood. I guess I could have gotten into real estate, but I am too much of a free spirit. When in doubt....make cool things and decorate the world you live in"

Facebook : Pete Apicella (PiMo)

Website: PeteApicellaArts.com

Sadie Staley

Sadie is an aerialist from St. Louis, Missouri that has been in practice since age 14. While she focuses on aerial silks, she also finds joy in trapeze, rope and lyra/hoop as other apparatuses. She grew up in a large circus family that valued trying exciting things and letting the body move creatively and this is one of the avenues she took to do that.

She hopes to show Moab the beauty of this art by demoing her skills and answering questions!

Instagram: @skaediirose

Leanna Usher

Leanna Usher is a multi-dimensional human, focusing on many hobbies. When she was young, she would draw and paint for hours but when she got to middle school, she lost touch with her creative roots for years; her journey as an artist has ebbed and flowed. Ultimately, Leanna hopes for all people to connect with their creativity and unleash their inner artist, despite what culture or self-doubt may have encouraged. She is originally from Atlanta and has resided in Moab for over a year, and desires to add beauty to an already gorgeous place.

Scott Brunmeier

Scott has been drawn to the openness of the West since he can remember. Its space and scale simultaneously stupefy and inform leaving the viewer wanting more. It turns out this is very addicting to the artist :)

Recently Scott has been diving deeper than his usual obsessions of aesthetics and technique. He’s been searching for the meaning behind the forms he chooses to study. Only after reading a book a friend recommended, “The Poetics of Space,” did he realize why he continues to search. He concluded that with each study/painting he is searching for the “poetic image” that already exists in the ether. Archetypes that flows back through all consciousness.

Nowadays you can find him out searching, with his dog Lila.

Instagram: @sbruncloud