And then, after a few weeks, the entire thing is destroyed.
That, essentially, is what's happening at 337 S. 400 East in Salt Lake City, where a two-story stucco building sits covered with graffiti. Looking at the otherwise nondescript structure, you might think it's abandoned and waiting to be demolished. And you would be half-right.
The building will be torn down this summer, but it's far from empty. Almost every inch, from exterior walls to alcoves, hallways and stairwells, is being transformed by an unlikely community of artists who are treating the 25,000-square-foot space like one enormous blank canvas. An artist or group of artists is tackling each of the building's 42 rooms in a distinct style, creating a kaleidoscopic, fun-house effect.
The whole thing is known as the 337 Project, a grass-roots artistic effort unlike anything Utah has ever seen. It's not about money; it's about the sheer joy of making art. More than 125 artists, from formally trained painters to young graffiti taggers, are working side-by-side to create something that will have the life span of a housefly.
Before the wrecking ball arrives, 337 will open its doors Friday for a festive Gallery Stroll that will include live music and performance art. Visitors will be able to stream through the building, check out the art and mingle with the artists in the adjacent parking lot. The structure, across the street from Ichiban Sushi, will stay open weekends through May 27, maybe longer if interest remains strong. Then, by August, it will be a pile of rubble.
"The destruction is actually an important part of it on lots of levels," says Salt Lake City attorney Adam Price, who owns the building and organized the project with his wife, graphic designer Dessi Price. "It gives the artists license to try things they might not have done otherwise because they know it's not going to be around to haunt them."
Art by lottery: The Prices bought the building, a century-old house covered with a stucco facade, last year and planned to live upstairs while renting out the rest of the space to commercial tenants. But after an inspection revealed major problems, the couple decided to tear it down and start over.
Then, in New York City last December, the Prices visited 11 Spring Street, an empty, five-story building in the Nolita neighborhood that became a magnet for graffiti artists before it was closed for renovations. On the flight home, Adam and Dessi talked about how cool it would be if they did the same thing with the 337 building. And an idea was born.
After notifying some of Salt Lake City's contemporary artists, the Prices hosted a meeting at the building Feb. 10. Some 50 artists showed up. To assign space within the building as fairly as possible, Dessi Price drew artists' names out of a bucket. Names were announced in groups of five to keep the selection process moving.
"It created this race dynamic," says Adam Price, a thirtysomething litigator with an amiable, low-key demeanor. "It was pretty funny to see all these artists scampering around the building, trying to get to their favorite spaces before anybody else."
Soon afterward, artists began covering their respective spaces with spray paint, brushed-on paint, stencils and assemblages. As word spread, the ranks of artists swelled. And as the building came to life, others became interested. A team of filmmakers shot footage there in April for the 48 Hour Film Project, which requires participants to write, shoot and edit a short movie in two days. The Vile Blue Shades, a Salt Lake City rock band, plan to shoot a video inside the building.
Ric Collier, director of the Salt Lake Art Center, is so intrigued with the 337 Project that he's tentatively agreed to devote an exhibition to the enterprise next summer that would combine photographs, video, text and maybe even pieces of artwork rescued from the condemned building.
"This is the best of the contemporary art spaces we have [in Salt Lake City] right now. I'm so envious of it and so proud of it," Collier says. "There's some great work in there, and there's some not-so-great work in there. But the energy, the enthusiasm and the collegiality [of the artists] is phenomenal. It's like all of a sudden having Old Faithful erupt in a vacant lot."
The Prices are shouldering some of the $5,000 cost of the venture, with contributions from the Salt Lake Art Center, the Utah Arts Council, the Salt Lake City Arts Council and a handful of sponsors. The project suffered a brief setback April 21 when one of its artists, apparently upset that his space was accidentally assigned to someone else, entered the building in the early-morning hours and vandalized five rooms. But considering that 337's artists come and go at all hours and that many people consider graffiti an eyesore, overall reaction has been surprisingly positive, Adam Price says.
"I expected some resistance from the neighborhood or the city government to doing something like this with a building," he says. "But it's been completely the opposite. Generally speaking, the closer people live to the project the more supportive they've been."
Hey, want a ceiling? If anything, the 337 Project may be too popular. The Prices decided early on that the building would be open to any artist, regardless of training or experience. And so far, they haven't rejected any artwork for offensive content. But available space is running out, and Adam Price's cell phone rings daily with artists wanting to participate.
"I'm trying not to say 'no' to people. That [inclusiveness] is sort of the spirit of the project," he says. "But they have to be willing to be flexible about the space. The big surfaces are pretty much spoken for. Anyone who wants to paint a ceiling, I've got plenty of those."
On evenings or weekends, the building swarms with artists painting, punching holes in walls or otherwise remaking rooms into immersive aesthetic experiences. Artists range in age from college students to 78-year-old Edie Roberson, who contributed an orange door painted with the faces of a clown, a rabbit and Vincent Van Gogh.
The variety of artistic styles on display is a testament to the project's democratic nature. Jann Haworth, best known in Utah for her "SLC Pepper" mural on 400 West, turned part of a foyer into a blue-and-white china teacup. Dessi Price adorned an upstairs alcove with clocks and a six-armed, multitasking figure to comment on the frenetic pace of modern society. Erin and Nick Potter re-created a 1950s-era living room, complete with couch and vintage TV set.
"One of the things that's cool about this project is that there's no aesthetic judgment about what we're doing," says C.J. Lester, who transformed the building's only working bathroom into a clever meditation on anxiety and female body image. "It's given us a lot more opportunity for self-expression without editing or restrictions."
A "second home": At least a dozen 337 artists are renegade graffiti taggers who are not used to spraying legal spaces as part of a sanctioned project. Although some participants have noticed tensions between the academically trained artists and the street artists, most say they like interacting creatively with other artists whose work is unlike their own. Works within the building are anonymous, and walls and rooms sometimes bleed into one another, creating odd juxtapositions.
"It creates a level playing field," says Christian Arial, who has invited other artists to add to the expressionistic murals he's creating in an upstairs front room. "It's also cool to see artists' minds stretch a little when they come into contact with art that's different."
For these reasons, some participants already are struggling with seeing the 337 Project end. Some artists have discussed replicating it in another vacant building in Salt Lake City. But most involved agree there's a spontaneity about 337 that cannot be replicated.
"It's still going to be sad to see the building go," says Lester, who estimates she's spent more than 200 hours on her bathroom. "It's become a second home for a lot of us."
There's even talk of keeping the building up indefinitely as a kind of evolving community art project. But the Prices won't go for that. For starters, they plan to build four energy-efficient loft apartments on the site. And second, they don't want to renege on their deal with the artists.
"That would really betray the fundamental premise of the whole project," Adam Price says. "Part of what's so exciting about it is that it is so ephemeral. You only have six days to see it, and then it's gone forever."
---
* BRANDON GRIGGS can be contacted at griggs @sltrib.com or 801-257-8689. Send comments to livingeditor@sltrib.com.
WHEN: Friday from 6 to 11 p.m. The building will remain open Saturday and May 20, from noon to 8 p.m., and again May 25-27 from noon to 8 p.m.
WHERE: 337 S. 400 East, Salt Lake City. For more information, visit www.337project.org.
