paint your faith

Spring is here, and outside my Downtown East Side studio the cherry blossoms are falling and the last rays of afternoon sun filter through a thin veil of dove-grey clouds.  The rain still comes, but it is light, intermittent.  After a warm winter, the early flowers have already hit full bloom – daffodils, bluebells, crocuses.  The nights are still cold but each day dawns warm and bright, and outside on the streets there seem to be fewer angry words exchanged between passersby.  I have been cocooned inside these four walls for weeks, x-acto blade in hand, a cup of coffee always nearby, surrounded by a quickly accumulating carpet of little bits of plastic film, and a growing stack of finished stencil layers.  It is a tedious process, but one that gives my days & nights a sense of purpose and structure.  I trace, I cut, I paint.  I change the image, repeat again.  By the time I get to the wall I will have spent hundreds of hours on these images – from concept to photoshoot to the creation of each individual stencil – but it will all be worth it.

This city is worth it.  This neighborhood is worth it.

I am so happy to be able to give this back to my community.  To take the means that I have and create something beautiful, in the company of three amazing artists, something that everyone and anyone can enjoy, if they so choose.  This will be my first public mural in my hometown, and the biggest wall I’ve ever painted.  I am excited to welcome Peeta and Faith47 and Titifreak to Vancouver, excited that the city will be hosting such brilliant artists and that I have been able to do my part in providing them with a space to paint – just a few blocks from my studio, in the part of town that needs color and positive energy the most.

Sometimes the DTES is a hard place for me to spend my days and nights.  My building has rats and roaches and mold and a distinct lack of heat and proper wiring.  But even more than that, is difficult for me to see people who are hurting – no matter what the cause – and feel powerless to help.  The energy down here can be overwhelming at times, but there is so much light to be found within the sadness if you can look beyond the commonly held preconceptions to see it.  I’ve been here for about a year and a half now, and have found that the feeling of community here is stronger than anywhere else in Vancouver.  People look out for eachother.  Everyone helps each other out if and when they can.  For many people passing through, all they see is the drugs, the poverty, the homelessness.  They fail to see the humanity in each and every individual out on the street.  Someone said to me once that this is the most honest place to live in Vancouver.  That a lot of the people down here “just wear their problems closer to the surface” than people in other parts of town.  You spend some time down here and you realize that everyone’s just trying to make a living by whatever means they have available – just trying to get by.  But there are many more hurdles for these people to jump over in order to get through each day.

The DTES is well known as “Canada’s poorest postal code”.  Less people are aware of the fact that per capita, there are more artists here than anywhere else in Canada.  Behind many nondescript doors you’ll find pockets of studios and gallery spaces, if you know where to look.  It is a large and diverse community, but seems fragmented and disconnected – a place where people can be making work day in and day out in the same building and never meet.  I hope that this project will provide a place and a reason for the arts community and the community at large to come and hang out and get to know eachother a bit better, welcome a group of international artists who are visiting Vancouver for the first time, and share their thoughts and feedback on the project, on the concept of faith, and whatever else that happens to arise.  I hope that it provides an opportunity for residents of Vancouver to get a more balanced perspective on life in the Downtown East Side, to talk face to face with the people who live and work here, instead of experiencing it from behind the windowpanes of a moving car.  I think that placing art in public spaces – especially with a large-scale project such as this – has the potential to bring people together, to provide a common ground and a reason for interaction, to get us all out of our bubbles even if it’s just for a few minutes of the day.

But as I write, all this is still a month away, and I must get back to cutting stencils – daydreaming of sunshine and spraypaint and smiling faces, and the satisfaction of a job well done.

Indigo is one of the four artists collaborating Paint Your Faith Vancouver mural.