Supersize Me: The Artists Responsible for Utah’s Largest Street Mural

“The first day we got our lift, we started working at full extension or over 80 feet off the ground,” says Miles Toland. “We’ve been pretty comfortable on [the lift] the whole time, but it did take us a few days to get our ‘lift legs,’” he explained. “There’s a bounce in the basket that we kept feeling even after we quit for the day and were on solid ground.” 

If you spent any time downtown this spring, you likely came across the task Toland is describing: painting the mural he and Joseph Toney recently completed on the west side of Astra Tower, a new luxury apartment building at 89 E. 200 South and now Utah’s tallest building. 

To call their street art collaboration huge doesn’t fully capture this stunning piece. For perspective, its 14,000-square-foot area is the same size as three NBA basketball courts placed side-by-side. “We spent just over two days alone laying out the grid,” Toland says. “The scale is so massive, that it took quite a bit of forethought to get it right.” Toney adds, “We’re finding we’re using a combination of old systems and inventing new ones to get something this big done.”

The artists and I spoke on a rainy morning in mid-April 2025 during the only daylight hours they’d taken off since the painting phase began two weeks prior. But I learned that their collaboration on the project had gone on for well over a year before they opened the first can of paint. And, really, it’s no wonder. Toland and Toney’s Astra Tower mural not only dwarfs much of the cityscape around it, but, at least for now, is the state’s largest.

Aesthetic Merger

At first glance, Toland’s and Toney’s artistic styles are very different. Toland’s work is detailed and intricate and often centers on the human form. “My surrealist paintings capture the mysterious places we visit between sleeping and waking,” reads his website artist statement. Much of his work also includes mandalas and geometric patterns that he says represent balance and order and are a nod to the cycles and rhythm of nature.

The mountains are at the heart of Toney’s aesthetic approach, interpreted with graceful and almost abstract striations to signify ridgelines, slopes and canyons. He describes his landscapes as “ultra-contemporary” and created to “reflect a deep connection to environmental issues, drawing inspiration from the vastness of the American West.”

Toland and Toney also have plenty in common, too. Both are based here in Utah. Each’s repertoire includes studio work as well as murals, and both love the physicality offered by mural painting as well as the immersive experience of painting outside. “I love watching those moments when a mural I’m working on connects to the spaces surrounding it,” Toland says, “when, because of how the light hits it, it becomes a living part of the environment.”

The two met and became friends when both were selected as presenting artists for the 2021 South Salt Lake Mural Fest. And then in early 2024, when Kensington Investment Company issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a mural to adorn the western wall of the then-to-be-completed Astra Tower, they decided to team up to throw their collective hat in the ring for consideration.

Multilayered Tribute

The parameters of Kensington’s Astra Tower mural RFP were fairly broad, Toland explained. “They gave us an inspiration packet with the color palette they wanted us to use,” he says, “and asked that the theme be loosely based on the outdoors, but that was really it.” He and Toney created and submitted 10 options for Kensington to choose from. The one the developers ultimately selected is a melding of both artist’s distinctive standpoints and styles that pays moving homage to many of Salt Lake City’s most beloved attributes: the Wasatch Range, Great Salt Lake, the area’s abundant wildlife and the city’s vibrant diversity.

For Toney, the mural explores “the human connection to nature, the water cycle in the Wasatch and how we’re all connected to nature wherever we are, even in the heart of the city.” Toland pointed out how the piece’s focal point—two hands anchored in the landscape, one cradling the other–is intended to “speak to the intrinsic connection between nature and humans.” He also explained how the hands’ differing colors acknowledge diversity coming together in collaboration and unity.

From Astra Tower’s inception, Kensington Investment Company made a commitment to use the building to showcase local artistic talent. Inside, a nature-facing interior design features a 250-piece art collection, 90 percent which was created by Utah artists. “Rather than filling the building with mass-produced art,” says Caroline Holden Lewis, Astra Tower design lead, “we chose a more thoughtful approach. The most apparent aspect is that the art in Astra reflects our love for nature, particularly Utah's stunning natural beauty.”