Volunteers scramble to preserve sculptures hidden in plain sight in SLC neighborhood

SALT LAKE CITY — As a neighborhood inches closer to redevelopment, volunteers this week were busy saving massive sculptures and other artwork from a studio hidden in plain sight along State Street near 1300 South.

Since artist Ralphael Plescia’s death in August 2022, his ‘Christian School’ studio and exhibit had become a regular target of burglars and homeless people, volunteers said, and they wanted to rescue whatever art pieces they could before the place was leveled by the new owner.

“This date has been a long time coming,” said Reid Rouse, president of the nonprofit Make Salt Lake, as he assisted volunteers from the Utah Arts Alliance. “They’re sick of dealing with the property and maintaining it, so they want us to get things out.”

On Monday, volunteers were using heavy machinery to carefully remove a 2,000-pound serpent that was among the centerpieces in Plescia’s religious-themed exhibit.

“It’s a poured-in-place, concrete, religious labyrinth,” Rouse said. “A lot of the work is permanently attached to the structure of the building and is virtually inextricable.”

Volunteer Alexis Rausch said she knew and learned from Plescia and she felt a deep connection to the property.

“I’m happy that his work is being preserved,” Rausch said.

Rausch said the property became Plescia’s personal chiseling block after a family tragedy in the 1960s.

“He inherited the building after his father and his mother and his daughter all died in a car accident in 1967,” Rausch said. “Most of the art in the Christian School represents the creation story in the Bible.”

Rouse said Plescia’s sculptures would be housed at the Utah Arts Alliance’s Art Castle at 915 West 100 South.

The project, he said, has left everyone with mixed emotions.

“The building houses his life’s work,” Rouse said. “To be part of taking the building apart is absolutely heartbreaking.”