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"Drowning"
August C.
Wood, acrylics, charcoal, ceramic, and salt/sand.
I got inspired when, as a club, we went to visit the Great Salt Lake. It was awful to see just how much the lake decreased. After asking many people, I heard the same responses, "I miss being able to do more lake activities" or "I'm worried for my safety." As for me, we'd see several dead birds all around the ground. It smelled awful and it made me very sad. The number of them was overwhelming. I wanted to create a metaphor, symbolizing a woman 'drowning' with a horrified expression. Little bits of "sand" were placed around the painting, to show how shallow the water really was. The metaphor itself; while our lake is drying up and fading, it leaves many drowning in their own thoughts and worry. I would use paint first, creating several swirls in the background. Next, I'd rub over it with watered down charcoal, creating that depressing and disturbing look. I'd create the face, trying to make the woman look malnourished and starved. The sand was a last minute idea, used to show how the water was shallow, but it'd still have overwhelming and stressful thoughts lurking inside of it.

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"Salty Tears"
Jeilani Arredondo
May 2023
Ceramic sculpture, glass, sand, ink

Can you hear the cries of the dead as he sits in the dry and arid bowl? - his prayers for divine intervention as the sharp and heavy tears plummet to create small bodies of water?... In my culture the dead are bedded in delicate and beautiful vases, not the other way around. The west I see within the Great Salt Lake wraps the dead in a dry and broken bowl, as the dead slowly becomes one with the sand and dust as he deteriorates with time. When no one heard the cries of the Lake, winds of dust were screamed. The face of agony from the dead, the sickness, an eerie feeling of unease and disturbance as our lake dries up. Valleys that once graced with beauty to the eyes of those who saw it now leaves whispers and sights of death. Who will cry enough salty tears to fill our Great Salt Lake?

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"Aqua, Sapped. And Perpetual Bleeding"
River P. Wing
Wood, Acrylic, Glass, Resin.

The Great Salt Lake. Amongst the world's most wondrous fluent bodies. Sapped of heart, withered- its form, robbed from its love for the biome it supports, now where corpses trace the shores farther than the eye's reach. Drained is that water to all the places with no meaning. With its departure arrives a sweeping and nauseous wind that carries onward, smiling, with wispy arms outstretched. A cold and deathly embrace as its gift to life sat pinched by mountains. Plants sway to the wind's song, the trees singing along with rustling leaves while the melody of animal coughs, their chokes, filling the valley. So where is our water headed? Why do humans chew up its body? To spit it out on hollow dreams of beauty? To where does this water journey? Does it pool, dreaming of melting into the blue sky?

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"The Dustbowl"
Donna Harvey
Oils, bones, collage, paper, charcoal, colored pencil

Inspired by the lake’s low level and exposed sand, I created this piece to show the future of the lake and specifically rowing. Originally, I rejected the idea of having a rowing team involved considering that the sport is a little more expensive, due to the equipment. However, I want to convey that the lake drying up affects affluent people as well anyone else. I also wanted to connect my rowing team, Utah Crew, to this. I have rowed with them for about 4 years now and have seen how the water levels have decreased over the years. When I returned to rowing from quarantine, the rocks around the marina entrance looked taller than I remembered. And as I row on the lake, I take in the unique beauty of the lake, even literally as the lake made its way into my eyes. It hurts quite a lot, but backsplash is part of the rowing experience. The boat, full of the bones of once strong rowing athletes, was intended to portray the consequences of the lake drying up. After all, you can’t row if there’s nothing to row with. Nothing but a dust bowl wasteland is left. After visiting the lake to gain some inspiration, the club ran into a graveyard-like area with decaying bird corpses scattered in the sand. The scene, while heartbreaking and a bit disturbing, inspired me to add carcasses in the sand to add to the skeleton theme. I’ve lived in Salt Lake my whole life and grown close to many people here. To think that I may have to leave it all behind due to toxic gases is devastating.

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Art Student: August Carlton
Medium: wood, paint, charcoal, ceramic

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By: West Hoggan
May 2023

This piece was created with chalk pastels and pencils on paper.

I created this piece because of how much animals and the natural world mean to me. The loss of the great salt lake is not only affecting us, but its loss will be detrimental to the many species that rely upon the lake. This includes the brine shrimp and brine flies that live within and around its waters, and the gulls that feast at its shores. And not to mention the millions of birds that use the lake as a rest stop during their yearly migration.

What I illustrated, in color, is the natural uses the lake has, and the things it provides to its animal population. In the pencil’s gray tones, I represented things that are directly impacting the shrinking of the salt lake, and the animals around it. All of it human-made and caused. All around it the outside shape represents what size the lake used to be in 1985. On the inside the shape is the lake's size as of 2022–the lowest it's ever been in recorded history.

I think often we forget that the salt lake is not affecting just our own health and economy, but the life that has relied upon the lake thousands of years before we even set foot here.

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For my art piece I focused on the chemicals that could escape if the Great Salt Lake dries up. (Hence the slimy monsters.) I also emphasize how this is a significant issue but no one will discuss this issue. I used pen and ink for my piece, and a mix of acrylic markers in the sprinklers and the lawn. Although it shows the Salt Lake Capitol and in some way “calls them out,” I think it goes for everyone. Spread awareness!

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While I am pleased with the results of a new medium (casein paint on linen panel), how to tackle the subject matter of the mythic and expansive salty lake of my youth was confusing. As a child, my imagination was captured by the fantastical postcards that pictured multitudes of floating adults in turn of the century swimsuits and speeding spaceage trains arriving from a mere dot on the horizon. I was certain that the jackalopes seen on some of those cards lived there, on that mysterious island also floating in the center of the lake as I viewed it from a dirty, salty, fly infested "beach" of sorts. The tiny little bags of salt printed and sewn to the side of  a few of the most special cards were like a Cracker Jack prize until torn off, opened, and disappointedly found to be exactly what was promised.
How do I feel about the Great Salt Lake today? I guess I find it kind of funny, and I find it kind of sad.