SUMMER OF MURALS
Turning fenCes into Art
While NHMP isn’t as catchy an acronym as BUMP (the Beltline mural program I shared with you last week), the Northern Hills Mural Project has more community buy-in than any public art/ mural program Calgary has ever seen.
The idea for the mural came from Kim Walker, an artist living in the community, who saw the 850-metre, six-foot-high blank residential fence along several blocks of Country Hills Boulevard as a blank canvas.
Walker thought: What if the fence, instead of being a barrier, brought the community together and became a source of community pride? Working with the City of Calgary and 40 homeowners, who each owned part of the fence, she and another volunteer, Laura Hack, were able to get everyone onside to create what would become Canada’s longest outdoor mural.
A Northern Hills Mural Project committee was formed to manage the project and conduct extensive community engagement.
They obtained funding to allow them to hire an experienced artist to help create the design, based on the theme “History of Calgary.” Local artist Mark Vazquez-Mackay was chosen from an open request for proposals, based on his painting expertise and teaching skills.
Vazquez-Mackay’s role was to develop the mural design and paint a template (think: huge colouring book) of the icons and images identified by the community to trace Calgary’s history from the glaciers to the present
in small sections along the 850-metre fence. Walker and Vazquez-Mackay then organized
volunteer artists to oversee 50-metre sections to help guide individuals and families in painting specific sections, based on their interests.
The fence was painted in three days over the August long weekend by hundreds of volunteers, mostly from the community but with some help from former Calgarians and even people from outside the city. Most had little or no painting experience, but that didn’t deter them.
Finally, after a little touch-up by Vazquez-Mackay, Walker, Makenna Millot and Josh Chilton, the mural was completed and unveiled at a community celebration on Sept. 22.
Images range from Calgary’s first train to the 1886 fire, from Fort Calgary to the 1988 Olym- pics, from the Stanley Cup to the Grey Cup, from VIVO Centre to whiskey traders.
The community raised $63,000 in cash and in-kind donations in three months to pay for repairs (some fence boards were rotting) and to scrape and pressure-wash the fence. Then about 415 gallons of paint products — including three coats of UV protection and one coat of anti-graffiti protection — were used to ensure the mural stays looking fresh for at least the next eight years.
Everyone is invited to come and see the work of art, with visiting family and friends, to learn about history of Calgary and our city’s amazing community spirit.