On behalf of the Art Around the Corner Foundation, I am thrilled to share exciting news with our community: you have selected the signature sculpture for the 2026–2027 Outdoor Sculpture Gallery at the Main Street and 200 North roundabout— Rip Tide, by Diego Harris.
This remarkable work captured the imagination of our board and art lovers across Southern Utah. Dynamic, powerful, and beautifully executed, Rip Tide reflects movement, energy, and the ever-changing rhythm of our community. It is exactly the kind of artwork that stops you for a moment, invites reflection, and becomes part of your daily experience.
Public art is at its best when it belongs to everyone. Thousands of residents and visitors pass through this roundabout each day, and Rip Tide will greet them as a bold new landmark—one that sparks pride, conversation, and connection. We are confident it will become a defining visual symbol for downtown St. George.
Our Outdoor Sculpture Gallery continues to grow as a vibrant celebration of creativity in Southern Utah. Opening March 28, the 2026–2027 exhibition will once again transform downtown into an open-air gallery featuring 35 world-class sculptures designed to thrive in our unique desert climate while inspiring curiosity and connection.
I warmly invite you to join us for the season’s special events, including An Evening with the Artists on March 27 at the Hilton Garden Inn, followed by a free, Gallery Opening Day with the Artists in Town Square Park on Saturday, March 28. These gatherings are a wonderful opportunity to meet the creators, celebrate public art, and experience the vision that makes our city so special.
Thank you for your continued support of Art Around the Corner Foundation and for helping make art an essential, vibrant part of our shared public spaces.
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Nathan Johansen
Nathan looks to nature for the forms he uses in his work. Plants with their seeds, in all their various stages of development, are rich in symbols and patterns that repeat in all life. His deep sensitivity to the natural world is embodied in his depictions of the cycles of plants and seeds and their relationship to mankind. A lifelong resident of Utah, Nathan graduated with a BA in Fine Art from BYU. Nate has worked in the Art Casting field for over 30 years, coordinating Fine Art Casting at Metal Arts Foundry in Lehi, UT.
Tree Phases Too is a depiction of several different developmental stages of a tree. The seed form at the bottom of the sculpture, has sprouted and is growing upward, encountering obstacles as it pushes through the soil, represented by the layered, cast shale. See the trunk of a mature tree, with its broadened, firmer foundation and the indication of cut off branches as well as the evidence of nails, driven in for some now, unknown purpose. The tree will send away the ripe, winged seed in the hope of perpetuation as it spirals back down to earth, to be buried in the soil ready to repeat this process all over again!
The depiction of earth layers are thin layers of actual shale stone while the sprout and seed were modeled in wood. For strength, all the parts were then molded and cast in bronze for insertion in the steel trunk.
