Magog Gorge to get a graffiti treatment
The city of Sherbrooke’s tag and graffiti committee is celebrating success in its ongoing mission of decreasing vandalism in the city with several new commissioned street artworks throughout the community this coming summer. The central piece among these new projects will be the creation of a four-metre high, permanent artwork covering two-thirds of the circumference of the water tower in the Magog River Gorge downtown.
“The creation of an artwork on this water tower will beautify the walking path and improve the experience of people using it,” said Chantal L’esperance, chair of the tag and graffiti committee, pointing out that the tower is vandalized on a regular basis. “Through the various projects our committee has organized or supported over the last few years, we have noted that authorized works of graffiti are rarely vandalized as they are respected by other artists in the milieu.”
Graffiti artists Vincent Arnold and Boris Biberdzic have been commissioned to produce the work, which L’esperance said will highlight the role that the river and hydroelectricity have played in the development of the city. Arnold and Biberdzic were the artists behind the mural on the Partage St-francois on Wellington Street South that was painted last summer.
“We wanted to do something bigger, but this was the design they picked.” Arnold said, explaining that eight other groups submitted proposals, including the art collective M.U.R.I.R.S. that is responsible for the city’s historic murals.
In addition to the water tower project, the tag and graffiti committee is
supporting a range of other works including the painting of the Recupex clothing donation bells by five local artists, the painting of the 14 columns that hold up the Joffre Bridge, an initiative to create murals on the Murray Residence in Fleurimont, and a new artwork for the tunnel linking the Marché de la Gare with the nearby Cigarerie parking lot. The “L’art t’appelle” youth graffiti contest will also be returning this coming fall, allowing local young people to vie for the chance to decorate the city’s sidewalk plows for the coming winter.
The tag and graffiti committee was formed in 2011 with the goal of encouraging legal street art and building dialogue in Sherbrooke between graffiti artists and the wider community.
“We’ve given urban artists a wide range of canvasses on which to display their talents,” noted Captain Guylaine Perron of the Sherbrooke Police, calling the committee’s mission a distinct success.