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- Fairpark in Salt Lake City is home a new public sculpture celebrating the west side's spirit and community.
- Artist Matt Monsoon created What We Build Together to honor unsung neighborhood heroes.
- The sculpture features oversized profiles of four people and reflects Fairpark's multiculturalism and cooperative spirit.
SALT LAKE CITY — Fairpark has a new piece of public artwork meant to celebrate and reflect what community boosters say is the distinctive spirit of the west side neighborhood in Salt Lake City.
"As a Fairpark resident, I wanted to create something that makes my community proud and honors the many everyday unsung heroes who live here," said Matt Monsoon, a resident of Fairpark and the creator of the sculpture. "It's a tribute to the grandparents, neighbors, teachers and friends who make this neighborhood special."
The artist aims to honor the older and younger people in the neighborhood, "whose resilience and wisdom often go unrecognized," reads a statement from the city.
The sculpture, featuring oversized profiles of four people on an inverted pyramid, sits in a traffic-calming circle at 500 North and 1300 West. It's called What We Build Together and is the latest of some 150 works of art installed as part of Salt Lake City's Public Art Program in parks, streets and plazas and around buildings throughout the city.
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Multicultural Utah
Looking for more news about the different cultures that call Utah home? Visit our Multicultural Utah section for more stories, events and features."The figures represent the neighbors whose quiet strength forms the backbone of Fairpark. Anchored in Monsoon's personal connection to the area, the sculpture serves as both tribute and mirror — reflecting the intergenerational spirit of the community," reads the statement. It's inspired by Fairpark's "multiculturalism and cooperative spirit."
City leaders announced the installation of What We Build Together in a statement released Wednesday, though it's been at the Fairpark location since last week. The traffic circle it sits in is one prong of "traffic-calming" efforts along 500 North.
The city made a call for artists to decorate the Fairpark traffic circle in 2023, and Monsoon was picked after a public call for proposals. Monsoon was selected in part due to his "alignment with community themes of equity, identity and pride."
Out of the Blue, the multicolored sculpture of a humpback whale in the 9th and 9th community, is one of the more well-known works of art to come out of the city's Public Art Program.
