exterior · 2018
Atlas (Largest Mural in Utah)
The challenge
Commissioned in 2018, "ATLAS" was a record-breaking undertaking designed to stand as a permanent visual anchor for Salt Lake City's transit corridor. The project required creating Utah's largest mural on a vertical canvas standing 85 feet tall. The primary technical hurdle was the height and external exposure at the North Temple Frontrunner Station; executing fine-art aerosol realism from a high-altitude lift meant battling consistent Wasatch Front winds and high-visibility public scrutiny.
Spanning over 3,600 square feet, the mural depicts the mythological Atlas: a bearded figure reaching up into a red nebula, above a turquoise sea crossed by sharks. I utilized freehand aerosol techniques with zero stencils to maintain the raw energy of contemporary street art while achieving gallery-level detail.
The wall sits at 455 W. 200 North, on the side of a new apartment complex, facing the North Temple station platform. City Weekly covered the job while it was still in progress and put numbers on it: 1,400 cans of paint in 45 colors, laid down over roughly two weeks of 8 to 10 hour days on a boom lift, through an August in Salt Lake City. Forty-five colors is the part worth sitting with, because it is the whole reason the finished wall reads the way it does from the platform.
The subject is Atlas holding the universe, partly underwater, sharks crossing the water around him. Asked what it meant at the time: “For me, it basically means capturing your dreams, or chasing them.”
This monumental scale installation remains a state landmark, cited by City Weekly and Fox 13 as a defining work in the Utah public art scene.
