Storytellers Canvas | El Ostinato del Arte @ Casa Pilar

📚 Tuesday, August 25th, 2026 | 6:30 PM
Casa Pilar, Salt Lake City, UT
Where art meets imagination under the moon.

🌙 This August, thirteen storytellers enter the garden at Casa Pilar. After each seven-minute piece, violinist and fingerstyle guitarist Arron Jacques will answer it in music... he'll be listening for the narrative emotional ostinato, the stubborn little motif hiding beneath the story, and then on his violin he'll play it back into the night.

This August, Storytellers Canvas will gather in the whimsical backyard wonderland of Casa Pilar, a living art installation and one of Utah’s most enchanting creative spaces. 

Built in the 1890s and transformed by the visionary Spanish-born artist Pilar Pobil, the home itself is a masterpiece: vivid walls, painted doors, blooming gardens, intimate rooms, and stories layered into every corner.

Pilar believed art should be lived with, not placed at a distance. She opened her home and garden so people could gather in beauty, friendship, and generosity of spirit, creating what she called “an atmosphere of spring beauty… and a love for what makes life worth living".

This month, we honor that spirit.

Our special guest artist, Arron Jacques is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2017, he took 1st place in the Utah State Fingerstyle Guitar Championships, and was runner up in 2024. Arron has released two full length solo albums, Pug Rider and Forlorn Hope. In addition to his solo work, he is the former violinist for Murphy and the Giant and the current violinist for Sean Baker’s Recycled Stardust. He is currently working on a third solo album to be released in 2027.

Arron will bend his artistic ear toward each piece of narrative art, listening for the ostinato hiding underneath it, the phrase that refuses to disappear. Then he'll pluck it from the ether and translate what he heard, felt, and witnessed into a musical motif: something that keeps thrumming back to life through every variation.

"An ostinato in music is a short musical phrase, rhythm, or pattern that repeats over and over again while other elements in the music may change. Derived from the Italian word for "stubborn" or "obstinate," it acts like a musical loop that drives the piece forward."

Whether you bring music, poetry, movement, confession, comedy, or another form of expressive magic, your offering will be translated into some stubborn ear worm of a melody.

✨ Midway through the evening, we pause for a special 30-minute intermission, a respectful guided wandering through Casa Pilar herself.

Guests will have the rare chance to explore the living artwork of the home: Pilar’s paintings, sculptures, collected treasures, and the intimate beauty of the gardens she so lovingly opened to others. This includes the Pilars sacred burial chamber exhibit.

Casa Pilar is currently raising bridge funding toward permanent nonprofit status, so the art, the garden, and nights like this one can keep happening. You can directly support these efforts by visiting CasaPilar.org and donating here.

A very special art store will be open during intermission giving you the chance to take a piece of the magic home with you.

Then we return for our second half of storytellers, carrying whatever revelations we discovered amongst the rooms.

For one night the SLC Lunatics invite you into Casa Pilar's garden.
A reflection of art alchemized into melody.
A gathering of creators inside a living work of art.

🌙 Dress Code: Flamenco drama, bohemian romance, painter's garden eccentricity, wear the clothes that say, I am an artist. I belong in this garden.

🎭 Audience Favorites: After each half, the audience will vote for the piece that moved them most, through laughter, vulnerability, beauty, or quiet revelation.

🏆 Selected favorites will receive special prize from our sponsor Bell Book & Candle.

🗓️ Event Details
When: Tuesday, August 25th at 6:30 PM
Where: Casa Pilar

403 E 8th Ave
Salt Lake City, Utah 84103

Capacity: Intimate and limited
Story Slots: 13 performers | 7 minutes each
Intermission: 30-minute Casa Pilar art tour
Sign-ups: First come, first intonated

🍎 Come tell a story.
Become melody.
See your reflections on the strings of a travelers violin.

Storytellers Canvas | The Ostinato del Arte @ Casa Pilar