Wake the Great Salt Lake unveils new temporary audio installation by artist Stefan Lesueur
The Salt Lake City Arts Council and Wake the Great Salt Lake are proud to announce Watershed Stories, a temporary public art installation by Salt Lake native and Germany-based artist Stefan Lesueur, on view October 13–18, 2025, at the newly reimagined Seven Canyons Refuge in Liberty Park.
The immersive sound installation will transform the historic Seven Canyons Fountain with a network of fourteen speakers, each playing recordings of streams and creeks from across the Salt Lake Valley. Blending the natural sounds of flowing water with voices and stories gathered from the community during a series of public workshops earlier this year, the piece reawakens the fountain — once a beloved site of play for generations of children — with memory, sound, and collective imagination.
“What excites me about Watershed Stories is how it shifts our perspective. Instead of looking at art, we listen — and in listening, we remember,” said Andrew Shaw, the Program Lead for Wake the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake City Arts Council. “By using sound rather than sight, it calls up memory in ways that visual art cannot. The fountain becomes alive again through echoes of water, reminding us of what once was and what we must preserve; memories that tie us to this place and to the Great Salt Lake itself.”
For Lesueur, the work is deeply personal, “This idea has been with me for a long time. I have significant memories as a child playing in the Seven Canyons Fountain that shaped my sense of Salt Lake City and its connection to water. When the opportunity came through Wake the Great Salt Lake, it felt serendipitous: a chance to bring an idea I had carried for years into the place where it first began.” Lesueur added, “At first, the concept was only about the fountain and water itself, but we expanded its scope. By emphasizing the lake and the community, the project invited me to weave in stories and voices from people across the valley. That collaboration transformed the piece into something much richer, where the sound of water mingles with the sound of memory. For me, living far from Utah now, this has been a meaningful way to stay connected — to give back to the place I grew up and to inspire others to recognize their own relationship with water and the Great Salt Lake.”
Watershed Stories runs October 13–17 from 4–7 p.m. each evening, culminating in a full-day presentation on Saturday, October 18, from 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Visitors are encouraged to linger, listen, and reflect as the sounds shift and unfold over time — an experience that is at once simple and profoundly layered.
The project builds on the workshops Lesueur led in April 2025 across Sugar House Park, Memory Grove, Liberty Park, and Three Creeks Confluence Park, where participants sketched, recorded, and shared reflections on their relationship to water.