So Much Art...You Just Have To Look For It

 I picked up a brochure the other day. It was printed for locals and tourists alike. Even though we've been here for two years, I still feel like a tourist many times as I drive and walk around town. That's why I picked up the brochure...to help me get to know my community better.

And what better way to get to know a place than to look at its art.

Of course, you can't know everything about a place by looking at their art, but there's a lot you can find out--you just have to look for it.

The brochure is a map to find murals, large paintings found on the sides of buildings. 

Of course, when we first drove through downtown, we'd see some of these murals--they were hard to miss, especially the newest addition, a mural celebrating the life of Gail Halvorsen, or as he is better known, The Candy Bomber.

The funny thing about this type of artwork is you see them now and again as you drive through town, but you don't know just how many of them there are until you look at the brochure--they're everywhere. And our town is small, relatively speaking. It's amazing just how many of these public displays of art there are.

I noticed something similar a few years ago. I follow an account on Instagram. A bicyclist likes to park his bike in front of large murals in Salt Lake City and post the pictures on Instagram. He's done this for years and he never seems to run out of murals to photographs. It's not that I know everything about Salt Lake City, but I thought I knew it better than that. I guess not.

I picked up the brochure just before it got cold here. I haven't had time to actually follow the map and see all the murals.  Maybe when things warm up, I might take a walking tour. The downtown area is small enough I could see all of them in one afternoon.

Sounds like fun.