Art festival celebrates American spirit in Salt Lake City

Sugarhouse Arts Festival brings out the best of community art to celebrate the nation’s independence

            Thousands of people had the chance of celebrating American spirit in the Sugarhouse 4^th of July Arts Festival, that took place last July 4 in the Salt Lake City neighborhood of Sugarhouse.

            The event, organized by the Sugarhouse Chamber of Commerce, gathered different kinds of art and cultural events that brought the community together and fostered engagement and involvement on what American cities know how to do best: a vibrant neighborhood life.

            And evidences of this vibrant life could be seen on the activities held by the festival organizers.

            During the hours the festival was open, several different activities took place, such as a central stage, where local bands and musicians performed, a dog parade was conducted at 2100 South.

Also complementing the activities, food trucks were available for all those who were both in need of food and curious to try different flavors and aromas. All these combined with several new bars and restaurants that opened in the area over the past year.

Among the forms of art that were available at the festival, a special focus was giving to arts related to the urban scene. Elements of our daily life were present in the festival, providing us with the unusual and the curious when it comes to manifesting our own creativity.

Paintings on vinyl records were a major work shown at the festival. The works portrayed iconic cartoons and comic situations that revolve life and popular culture of the 21^st Century.

The use of elements of nature combined with classic painting were the major vectors on Sam Snow’s artworks. Combining wood and painting, the artist gave a different perspective on our relation with the nature that surrounds us.

            Pop art was also represented in the festival with interesting re-readings and works inspired by iconic brands and franchises, such as Star Wars of Pokemon, the famous Japanese videogame and cartoon that was a fever in the late 1990s.

            Justin Hillgrove, artist and member of The Hive Gallery, specialized in Pop Art, considers that kind of art as a way of relief from our daily life.

            “Our art is cheaper than therapy,” said Hillgrove.

            Besides arts, the festival was a major stand for political campaign aiming the next municipal elections, in November.

            Candidates like Mayor Ralph Becker, who is seeking a third term, and George Chapman had stalls in the neighborhood, trying to get support for the upcoming voting process.

            Chapman said he was against the streetcar expansion and he would halt it, if elected to the office.

This festival has been on for more than a decade, but this year it has gained more importance after the Sugarhouse Monument has been rebuilt and rededicated last June.

After the major change, the monument is fully walkable, allowing more people to walk through and allowing local business to expand their activities.

Tom Gilbert, Vice Chair and Chair of Events for the Sugarhouse Chamber of Commerce praised that the new monument was a major driving force to this year’s festival.

“The festival gets the whole community out. It gives a new perspective, it shows how walkable Sugarhouse is,” said Gilbert. He also mentions the fact the festival exalts all the qualities the neighborhood has when it comes to things to do.

“It shows people how cool the area is when it comes to eat, to go out, to shop and to have fun,” told Gilbert.

When asked whether the festival will be held in the years to come, Gilbert said it continue to be promoted in the future.

“This was the 16^th annual festival and they’ve all been a blast. They continue to grow every year and we continue to get great sponsors from the community,” said Gilbert.

Re-reading Peanuts in a pop art context (Photo: Gabriel Neves)

Sugarhouse monument is officially reopened in Salt Lake

Construction that took almost a year presents new features and community hopes for attracting more people and businesses into the neighborhood

Splash pad, one of the new features of the revitalized monument (Photo: Gabriel Neves)

            After almost one year of a major facelift, the Sugarhouse monument, located on the corner of Highland Drive and 2100 South in Salt Lake City, had its grand opening on Friday, June 12.

Among the activities held at the ceremony, there were ribbon cutting, live music with a band performance and the burial of a time capsule, which will be open in 2054, when the area celebrates its Bicentennial.

Topher Hormann, a member of the Sugarhouse Community Council, an association that represents the area and member of the time capsule team, was the main speaker in the burial ceremony and a huge supporter of the renovation projects. On an interview, Hormann said that “the dedication of the plaza is important, because of all the effort of these people, all the years planning and the investment made in public space, our community has created this new place with a new sense of place.”

Reconstruction of the monument began on August 2014, as part of an ambitious redevelopment program conducted by the Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency that aimed to integrate residential and business areas. The total cost of the renovation was estimated in $2.5 million.

Among the new features of the Sugarhouse monument, there are a splash pad, where children can refresh during the hot Summer months, new gardens and a walkway that replaced the road stretch that drivers going on 2100 South could turn right on Highland Drive. In addition to the new features, the original water fountain, which was not working for years, has been restored.

Community leaders from the area were cheerful and hopeful the rebuilt monument could be the starting point of a more vibrant and walkable neighborhood.

Amy Berry, chair of the Sugarhouse Community Council, said that the impact of the monument “will be wonderful for gathering spaces” and she also hopes that possible events in the facility “will bring a real life back to the community.”

Berry also mentioned that, while the street passed where the new monument is, “you could not be a pedestrian there, people would run you down.”

With more pedestrian accesses built in Sugarhouse, members of the community give good expectations when it comes to a more extended use of public transportation.

Helen Peters, head of Friends of the S-Line, an organization that promotes the use of streetcar lines, expects the monument can foster and promote more use of the S-Line of TRAX.

  

“We are hoping that, as people see that Sugarhouse is becoming a more vibrant community, that they’ll take the S-Line to come visit our community,” said Peters.

Peters also told her organization also aims to increase the “economic, social and cultural development of Sugarhouse,” as well as the transportation in the region.

Around the monument, new restaurants and stores and a new apartment building have also been built, revitalizing that part of Sugarhouse.

Sugarhouse neighborhood time capsule, to be open in 2065 (Photo: Gabriel Neves)

Returning...

After months of absence, here I am back to our blog, trying to approach different subjects that will make you think and reflect on what you have been doing with your life and the choices you make.

Wait and see, there will be more post coming up soon!

Thinking Out Loud: What on Earth is Caviar Left?

First Video on the Blog!

Thought For The Day: "Nutritional Terrorism": the scientific paranoia that harms you

Everybody who has been trying to decide what to eat on meals almost always faces huge challenges and the fear of eating certain foods, especially because the nutritional composition (fats, carbohydrates, proteins, etc.) could affect our body weight and our health in general. And a myriad of scientific studies, one after another, bring some real tough issues ashore, such as the effect of certain substances in our organism. At most times, those studies turn some foods as some kind of villain to us, saying they are not good, they make you sick, this and that. Some time later, another study comes up saying the same kind of food can be actually good for you. Something really contradictory and misleading, since we don't really know what to believe when getting our bodies fed.

The problem with these studies is that most of them are taken by specialists as unquestionable truths, just like religious scriptures that most of us read and follow. Not to mention, the fact that the way these studies are interpreted and put in practice resemble the Holy Inquisition, the Catholic church court that persecuted and burned every opponent of its faith during the Medieval Ages. As an example, if you eat things from a certain food group, such as carbohydrates, you can be seen as a "heretic," and some people will criticize you or even avoid simply because you've been consuming food that is demonized in our time. For that particular conduct, the most appropriated name is "nutritional terrorism."

There is one researcher, at least, that condemns the excesses of diets and the paranoid behavior of behalf of healthcare professionals and the media. French endocrinologist Sophie Deram has been fighting nutritional terrorism for more than a decade, and advocates that excessive dieting and extremisms when choosing what to eat do not work out well in our bodies on a long term perspective. According to Deram's research, "our brain perceives diets as a huge danger and it will develop some adapting mechanisms. It will increase your appetite, reduce your metabolism, and it will also make you more obsessed for food." Also, the risk of developing eating disorders dramatically increases. "The diet will work on a short term basis. However, your brain will activate mechanisms for adapting, and will also 'turn on' both appetite and fat storage genes." In addition to these mechanisms, Deram also told that "the risk of developing addiction for food gets increased in 18 times after you go on a restrictive diet, as well as you develop eating disorders."

She also criticizes nutritional terrorism, by saying that "we see food nowadays in a very simplified way, when foods are either good or bad," and that "when you only focus on calories and on foods themselves, you forget to listen to your body."

And that is how our world is heading to: a society where half a dozen of privileged "scientists" will dictate your choices and eliminate one of your most basic rights, the freedom to choose what is really better for you, the right to decide for yourself, without any interference. Basically, the right to make decisions with no mandates from individuals, organizations or governments that are only trying to make our society smaller and weaker, in the name of a "greater good" that, in reality, will never really exist. This simplistic, but radical, approach is leading to lower self esteem, disorders, and even deaths. Simply because humans are prone to follow the simplest direction, which is not always the best.

Thought For The Day: Gun control, why it doesn't really work

Over the past 3 years, we have seen some people that, for a myriad of reasons that most of us could never explain, have decided to take other people's lives with no apparent motivation. That's what happened on May 24, 2014, in Isla Vista, Calif., a town neighbor to Santa Barbara and that is home for hundreds of students that attend University of California Santa Barbara. Elliot Rodger, 22, who was attending UCSB, was pretty much dissatisfied with the life he was taking and with the fact that he was also having some bad luck in finding women. Frustrated, Rodgers decided to write a 141-page-long letter that turned out to be a manifesto about his troubled life and that a "killing spree" would be happening.

And the spree really happened: at the apartment complex that Rodgers was living at, 3 people have been stabbed (I repeat: stabbed) and killed. After those 3 casualties, Rodgers decided to go for a ride with assault weapons, and killed 3 more people, until he was killed by police officers. One of the victims, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, Richard, blamed the National Rifle Association, and the politicians for the death of his son. And that fueled the debate about gun control, especially when it comes to people with mental illnesses.

When it comes to gun control, and all the claims that it reduces violence, all I can do is disagree with those claims. Every time people compare the U.S. murder rates with the ones of countries like Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, which have much lower rates, they don't realize the fact that these countries have a much smaller population compared to America. In fact, if you combine the population of these 3 countries, you only get 90 million people, which counts for only 28.5% of America's population! Let's compare with a country similar in size: Brazil. The second largest country in the Americas, has about 202 million people, and adopted a strict gun control in 2003. According to the latest Global Homicide Survey, published by the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC), the U.S. had, in 2012, about 14,827 murders, with a ratio of 4.7 violent deaths per each 100,000 people. On the other hand, Brazil had whopping 50,108 murders, with a staggering ratio of 25.7 violent deaths per each 100,000 people. These numbers are comparable to a civil war, and the amount of dead humans is greater than all deaths reported in the war in Iraq, that went from 2003 to 2011. Needless to say that gun controls will not stop the increase of armed militia organizations, as well as it will dramatically increase the smuggling of guns, especially from countries like Mexico and China, which feed the black market of weapons on Earth.

This is what will happen in America if gun control was ever to happen. For a country of its size, and for the political regime it currently adopts, the number of murders in the U.S. is relatively low and below the world average of 6 per every 100,000. The same gun control advocates would certainly get weapons to defend their families and properties, as well as getting armed security officers to defend their lives! The alleged statements defended by anti-gun individuals are simply hypocrisy, since they would buy guns to exercise their defense, instead of turning their guns in. These arguments are pointless and very unreasonable, with no credible evidence that reducing guns would save lives. We need to save our right to bear arms and the right of defending our loved ones and our properties now. Otherwise, we would go back to the stone ages.

This is my thought for the day, for all those like me, who are here thinking out loud.