Ottawa puts call out to artists to beautify ‘gateways to the city’
By Alex Robinson
Ottawa East News, Apr 16, 2015
The city is searching for local artists interested in making their mark on two highway underpasses in the run up to Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations in 2017.
City officials launched a contest on April 3 to find an artist to paint community murals in underpasses that run beneath Hwy. 417 at Bank Street and Carling Avenue.
The competition was first held last year in the hopes of curbing graffiti on public walls by beautifying the community.
“The idea is to beautify gateways coming into the city and looking at it from a perspective of engaging the community in the design,” said Leslie Vanclief, a section manager with public works.
Last year’s murals, painted under Hwy. 417 at Metcalfe Street and Bronson Avenue at Riverside Drive, have helped to deter vandals from scrawling graffiti in the underpasses, Vanclief said.
“When a mural is installed, it reduces the amount of graffiti that is put on the wall,” she said.
Artists are expected to hold public consultations with the community for their designs and mural submissions are required to follow the theme of the 2017 celebrations.
Contestants have until the end of April to submit designs to the city. A committee of community members will then select a shortlist of three artists for each underpass, who will then further develop their concepts with the surrounding communities before submitting a final design.
The committee will then select a winner in June and the city hopes work on the murals will get underway by July and will be finished in mid-August.
The city has budgeted $25,000 for each mural.
Last year’s winning murals included work by local artists Christopher Griffin, Nicole Bélanger and Ottawa Urban Arts. Each underpass had a mural on one side with Bélanger’s 150th anniversary-themed paintings, and on the other were community inspired murals by Griffin and Ottawa Urban Arts, a team of urban artists who seek to empower youth.
Bélanger said she plans to submit another project this year.
“I have a very unique concept this year,” she said. “It’s a concept I’ve been working on through the years that I’m presenting to them. It’s very different.”
Griffin’s work, which was put up where Riverside Drive runs under Bronson Avenue, incorporated peregrine falcons. The artist took inspiration from the Ottawa Falcon Watch, a group of volunteers who guarded a nest of falcon hatchlings at a nearby bridge.
“I never knew there were peregrine falcons there before and that there was this group of volunteers,” he said. “Highlighting and incorporating the falcons was a natural subject matter and inspiration for the mural.”
After it was installed last summer, Griffin’s work took on a life of its own as observers quickly took to the social networking website Reddit to speculate the meaning of the murals.
“It’s really interesting as an artist to realize once you do your work and it’s out there in the public to continue the conversation and you’re no longer relevant,” he said. “People were making stories up about it. And no one really knew if it was that somebody just placed them there and what the meaning was behind them.”
More information on the competition can be found at ottawa.ca.
http://www.ottawacommunitynews.com/n...-to-the-city-/