Artspace: Bridging the Gap Between Art and Commuity

Downtown Salt Lake City is enriched is sprawling with a culture like nowhere else. The area has expanded tremendously in the past decade, growing with it an appreciation for history, community and of course, the arts. Just within the Old Greek Town neighborhood, Artspace is continuing their practice of bringing art and community together with the reconstruction of the residential and commercial space known as Norbridge Court.

Founded in 1980, Artspace began as a nonprofit dreamt up by artists who needed an affordable space to work and live. According to Artspace’s Vice President Cindy Franke, each building project mixes housing units and commercial spaces such as galleries, office spaces and retail. “Being a nonprofit, part of our mission is to demonstrate that we can build affordable housing sustainably,” Franke says. “Some are as small as 300-square feet so an individual artist can have a place to work.” Today, the nonprofit operates out of seven buildings with 278 housing units and over 125,000 square feet of commercial space.

“Being a nonprofit, part of our mission is to demonstrate that we can build affordable housing sustainably.”

In 2001, Bridge Projects (now known as Norbridge Court) became Artspace’s first construction project. It was in June 2025 when the building with its 62 apartments and the 17,000-square feet of commercial space would undergo a full two-part facelift with plenty of new upgrades. “We’re completely gutting the apartments and improving the layouts, all new kitchens and bathrooms, brand new washers… It was tricky to do the renovation with people in the building, but it’s almost done,” Franke says.

With an extreme makeover still in its peak, many tenants are excited to see the final design. “Returning to Norbridge feels like coming full circle,” says founder of Reflective Art Studio, Sarinda Jones, who lived in an apartment at Bridge Projects, now coming back as a commercial tenant. “More than 20 years later, returning to the same building as an established artist and educator feels incredibly meaningful. I’m excited that Norbridge is once again becoming a place where artists can create, teach, collaborate and build community.”

Artspace has shown off their gratitude with two major displays of artistic ability. One was the commissioning of Smock and Roll to create a jaw-dropping mural inspired by physical landscapes that Utah projects mixed with the metropolitan area. “We knew we wanted a bright, abstract mural that felt modern, organic and fit for an urban environment all at the same time,” Smock and Roll says. “We took inspiration from geographical motifs … which evoke the ridge lines and rocky terrain surrounding the city but also mirror the energies within it.” The work tangles around the entire building, reflecting the creativity and energy that has gone into the renovation.

“We knew we wanted a bright, abstract mural that felt modern, organic and fit for an urban environment all at the same time.”

To kick off the renovation, Artspace commissioned Craft Lake City to program their new space called The Gallery at Artspace. Branded as Craft Lake City Contemporay, Craft Lake City will introduce a four show pop-up series with each show featuring a local artist as a guest curator. This exhbition, artist and arts administrator Nancy Rivera will organize the inaugural exhibition. The exhibition called Rarely Named will feature nearly 50 works by local artists such as Katelyn Field Garcia, Colour Maisch, Allison Joy McKinney, Jiyoun Lee-Lodge, Anna Laurie Mackay, Lu Wei, Aimee Odum, Kamila Stice, Maddison Colvin and Wren Ross. According to Rivera, the exhibition will focus on the artists’ practices of attention, highlighting their use of repetitive, embodied and ritualistic processes to investigate who we are and how we create meaning. “As a working artist, curating this exhibition has also given me the opportunity to collaborate with artists whose work I deeply admire,” Rivera says. “Much of my practice is solitary, so being able to collaborate and exchange ideas with other artists has been a meaningful part of this experience.” Rivera became the perfect candidate to curate the exhibition, while organizing several exhibitions for organizations such as the Utah Museum of Contemporary Arts.

The exhibition will open in conjunction with the ribbon-cutting of Norbidge on Sept. 2 from 3 p.m.-7 p.m. with performances by Gibson Girl Cabaret. Another exhibition put on by Craft Lake City opens up in November with a new curator. If you’re an artist looking for a creative space or someone looking for the next step in housing needs, contact Artspace through their website, artspaceutah.org.

Read more about the artistic minds in our community:
When It Comes To Art, Size Really Doesn’t Matter: The Helper Mini Art Gallery
Hear! Hear! Kimball Art Center’s (Re)sounding

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