You can tell there’s a difference in the air. The days are getting longer, the temperature is not as chilled, the flowers are starting to bloom, and the trees are beginning to bud and blossom.
The calendar tells us spring is well and truly here, a time for re-birth and growth. And the local arts scene is helping us emerge from winter’s icy grip with a variety of offerings around Richmond.
From cheerful and bright banners — the result of public submissions — lining city streets, to talks on beautifying empty spaces with colourful murals, there’s plenty to get us up and out to enjoy the change in season.
Colourful banners
More than 400 submissions were made last fall to Richmond’s annual street banner contest designed to enhance the city’s streetscapes.
“The designs chosen by our community this year celebrate the places, activities and experiences that make Richmond so unique and are a true testament to the diversity of our city,” said Mayor Malcolm Brodie in a press release announcing this year’s selections.
Participants submitted designs using a range of visual art forms including photography, digital art, painting, collage, illustration and printmaking. All were original images reflecting one or more of the following themes: active living, arts, culture and heritage, the city centre, parks and nature, and transportation.
Unlike most other cities that commission professional artists, Richmond’s street banner program uses designs determined by a community contest, with winners selected through both a community voting campaign and a panel of volunteers.
The winning banner designs are currently being installed on select street lighting fixtures in the City Centre area, as well as gateway roadways into the city where they will fly over the streets for one year.
To view the winning designs, visit richmond.ca/banners.
Public art
Whenever Richard Tetrault spies a blank space on a building wall, fence or siding he sees the opportunity to create vibrancy and tell a story.
No, he’s not one of those driven to do so under the cloak of darkness. Tetrault is an artist who includes mural painting as one of his outlets of creative expression — something he will explain in his lecture on April 10 as part of the city’s annual Lulu Series: Art in the City program at Richmond City Hall.
“It’s an integral part of being an artist to view the urban landscape as a potential palette,” said Tetrault, who lives in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside where some of his mural work is located.
“It’s exciting in a sense that I learned early on from doing murals that it’s much more than just paint on a flat surface. It’s part of the topography. It’s part of that landscape that I hope people will stop in front of for a minute to reflect on and hopefully become landmarks in a way. I think murals can become icons in the community.”
Much of what Tetrault achieves when creating a mural comes from engaging the community in the surrounding area.
“That’s so there’s a real integration with different ideas from outreach work that often inspires dialogue,” he said. “The murals then become a certain reflection of that community. I can’t say they encompass everything there, but they get the flavour of it. That makes every project different.”
Tetrault is no stranger to Richmond, but it has been many years since he has undertaken a project here. One of them involved enlisting the help of high school students to paint temporary building site hoardings for a local hotel project which depicted historical aspects of Richmond.
The other was titled Kids Guernica, an international, children’s peace mural based on Picasso’s classic created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village in northern Spain, by German and Italian warplanes during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.
Countries were invited to take part in the project, and when it came for Richmond to produce segments for a portion of Canada’s contribution, Tetrault coordinated the efforts.
“That was four or five intensive days with a lot of kids, and that piece is still travelling around the world as far as I know,” he said. “And when the mural came here we showed it at the airport at international arrivals. It was very dramatic.”
Tetrault’s presentation is the second of three events in the Lulu Series: Art in the City program.Author Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City: Transforming our Lives Through Urban Design, will present the final talk on Thursday, May 15. For more information, visit richmond.ca/luluseries. All Lulu Series events are free at Richmond City Hall.
