OGDEN — From now until April 2026, the Dumke Arts Plaza — located at 445 25th St. in downtown Ogden — will be home to an immersive art installation that aims to spotlight and demystify the environmental crisis facing the Great Salt Lake, which has declined to record-low levels in recent years.
Created through a collaboration between local artists and Weber State University fellows Kellie Bornhoft and Carey Campbell, “This was water” is a sensory experience featuring five crystalline sculptures created by Bornhoft and modeled after gypsum crystals — or “dirty diamonds” — found in the Great Salt Lake. As the crystals are formed, clay from the increasingly exposed lakebed becomes trapped inside of them, hence their nickname.
At the exhibit, each crystal sculpture — modeled after samples collected by Bornhoft — rests on a mound resembling the lakebed and is embedded with lights, speakers and lidar sensors, allowing them to play a Campbell-created soundscape that responds to viewers’ proximity.
The installation concept emerged out of a “This was water” concert experience created by Carey that premiered last year.
“In 2023, I started writing this chamber work for instruments, for electronics, kind of inspired by all of the data that was coming out about the Great Salt Lake drying up and the potential consequences,” Campbell told the Standard-Examiner. “(Bornhoft) contacted me a few months before the first performance and told me about herself, told me about what she was interested in and offered to do video work for the performance.”
From there, they embarked on their creative journey. The project was funded by WSU’s Matthew S. Browning Design Lab, the Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery and a Weber County RAMP grant, according to Bornhoft. It was further inspired by studies conducted by Bonnie Baxter — director of the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster University — and student Paulina Martinez-Koury, regarding the presence of microorganisms inside of the crystals.
“We’re basing a lot of this work on (Baxter’s) research that is all about these dirty diamonds and the life that lives inside of them,” Bornhoft said. “She’s being credited with discovering that the clay that gets embedded in them continues to have life.”
WSU students played an important role in bringing the installation to life, contributing to multiple facets of the project, including the creation of a companion website at https://www.thiswaswater.com/, which describes the situation at the Great Salt Lake, the science behind it, as well as that of the gypsum crystals.
For both Bornhoft and Campbell, using art to inform the public about that science, bridging the gap between the two disciplines and inspiring people to take action were key motivators.
“I think that art and science have always been more together than separate,” Campbell said. “But I think that the art helps make the science resonate with people. You can look at a bunch of facts and figures and maybe be struck by them, but I think that paired with some sort of art that is invested in making you feel, it contextualizes the data differently.”
“For me, it’s just what I get fascinated by and the desire to come in and make it digestible or tangible or comprehensible,” added Bornhoft. “It’s really about my own desire to understand it. And by going through the work, I learn myself. It’s kind of a side effect that other people can be brought in on that.”
“This was water” opened May 16 with a special live performance; additional live performances will be held Sept. 5, Nov. 7 and April 30, beginning at 6 p.m. A July 19 collaboration with the Making Waves artist collaborative at Farmers Market Ogden is also planned.
