Utah Artist Nick Pedersen’s recent work, “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” currently stands on two billboards on the corner of 870 South and 900 West, in Salt Lake’s Poplar Grove neighborhood. The display features depictions of two contrasting futures — one where Great Salt Lake survives and the other where it dies.
Great Salt Lake Collaborative Freelancer Mariah Maynes recently spoke with Pedersen about his work, which is on display as part of Wake the Great Salt Lake. This is what he had to say:
The following is a transcript of the interview. Some sections have been edited for clarity.
Maynes: Can you tell me about your piece?
Pedersen: I was one of the 12, I think, artists or groups that were selected to create a public art piece related to the [Great] Salt Lake. For my project I designed two large-scale images on billboards … showing two possible futures for Great Salt Lake.
Maynes: How did you go about making the images?
Pedersen: All of my work is created using my own photography. Then it's this elaborate process of digital collage and photomontage to build up these sort of imaginary worlds or hypothetical futures.
I started with gathering all the source material — I'm technically a photographer. That's my favorite part about the work that I do is going out to the places to capture source material. All of the images in this project were actually photographed by me going out to Antelope Island and other parts of the Great Salt Lake to capture the landscapes as well as the plants and animals.
Then I created two different images, one showing this sort of bright future where the lake water is replenished and it's thriving with a lot of biodiversity and birds and it's just this healthy ecosystem. The other one is [a] dark future that we're hearing about where the lake is possibly disappearing in the next five years if we keep using water in the way we are.
My project is really about showing these two possible choices and that juxtaposition. I thought it'd be cool to have them on billboards next to each other so people can really see that in their daily life and see what I kind of create this sort of visceral impact of what's happening.
Maynes: How did you get involved with Wake the Great Salt Lake?
Pedersen: The Salt Lake Arts Council has a lot of great opportunities and this is one of the bigger grants that they’ve ever received.
They had an open call about a year ago. I submitted a proposal based on the billboard idea in my neighborhood that's right by the Jordan River, [which] is a major tributary to Great Salt Lake.
I thought it would be really interesting to have it on a street location and sort of playing off of the design language of billboards and having an impact in people’s daily lives where it’s unexpected.
Maynes: Does Great Salt Lake hold a significance to you?
Pedersen: Definitely. I’m from Salt Lake originally, I grew up here. I studied photography at the [University of Utah]. Then I did [my] MFA on the East Coast. I was out of the East Coast for like 10 years and moved back here about seven years ago.
One of the first things I was excited to do is go see the Great Salt Lake, go to Antelope Island. That was a really impactful thing to see how low the water had gotten. I had no idea this was kind of happening while I was away. It was just shocking going back to Antelope Island and seeing the places that I would go to as a kid to go swimming and now you park there and you have to walk a mile to even reach the water.
So for the past years I've been wanting to create something related to drought in the west and like this aridification and especially the Great Salt Lake receding and issues that it might be created with air quality and just what the future looks like.
Pedersen’s work will be on display until June 4.
