paint your faith

Wall vs Mural

We are a few days away from the production of Paint Your Faith Vancouver and the anticipation is overwhelming, exciting and it is a great feeling to know that all the work we’ve done over the past six months is now coming to fruition.  We are in the midst of also producing an artist showcase and gallery event at an amazing gallery in downtown Vancouver, near Chinatown called Ayden Gallery owned by Ken Lum.  Ken has an amazing place and probably one of a kind in Canada.

We are doing something new for the Paint Your Faith project and that is adding an artist showcase to celebrate the past artists and the new ones we are working with.  During that process we created a before and after canvas while I was at our reproduction printers today.  ABC Photo in Vancouver is handling all of our print reproductions, these guys are amazing and can’t believe they are pumping out so much work in such little time, thanks again guys.

So back to this before and after thought I had today.  Since we are printing the before and after shots I thought I would share this with those who can’t be with us at the Gallery event this Saturday, April 24th.

There is an adage which many of you may know, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This adage refers to the idea that complex stories can be described with just a single still image, or that an image may be more influential than a substantial amount of text.  No matter which way you look at it, the areas which we have chosen to develop the murals are complex, misunderstood.  Places where hopes, dreams, pain, hurt all collide, thrive or die.

This wall could have been used and leased to companies like CBS Outdoor, Pattinson, Viacom or other large media companies who make millions of dollars off of advertising, but the Metropolitan United Church who owns the property decided to donate the wall to us for this project.  Lifting the spirits of the area, putting smiles on peoples faces, and giving people an inspiration was far more important than just profits. It is something you don’t see every day in the mass consumption world we live in.  Imagine replacing a few advertising billboards with artwork created by the type of artists we are working with, or having more organizations taking proactive approaches to improving a local area with this type of project.

I had lunch today with Sandra Severs who runs the First United Mission Church and  is one of our local partners. She asked me why we choose the downtown east side in Vancouver. The obvious answer was, the wall is at Abbott and W.Hastings St. which happens to be in the DTES, but more importantly, this mural has a chance to brighten up the area, get people to talk about the work, help create conversation about the theme, and it creates awareness for what First United Mission does day in and day out, which is being one of the strongest support pillars for the community in the DTES.

Back in Toronto, the wall is visited by local people, some groups come to have moments of prayer and reflection, tourists come by and take pictures and share it with their friends in other cities, it is admired by anyone and everyone who passes by the major intersections at Church and Shuter.  Even 8 months after the fact, the press are still writing about it, people are still blogging about it, and pictures and videos are being shared with family and friends.  The wall which is now are has become a part of the community and touches peoples lives everyday.

So I guess I would ask you this, would you rather have a billboard up with an advertisement or a piece of beautiful artwork in your neighbourhood.

So I arrived last Friday to Vancouver and after a five hour flight which wasn’t bad, I headed to rent my car so that I could drive to another rental company in North Vancouver so I could rent the passenger van that could hold all the paint we were going to pick up in Seattle, our film crew, Indigo and myself. You might be asking why didn’t you just rent a passenger van at the airport, well a) there weren’t any available at the airport and b) any passenger van in the area wouldn’t allow us to go to the USA with the vehicle. Now that we got that out of the way, on to the adventure.

So I hate to disappoint you but no drama here to talk about. We made it past the Canadian customs with a camera crew, artist, producer, and a big white 15″ long passenger van. Sound odd to you?

We decided to drive out to Seattle instead of shipping the paint because the order was quite large, shipping would have been pricey and who knows what would have happened at the border with customs, although I probably could have used a clearing house or broker but it isn’t a bad drive to Seattle and its beautiful when you are in a car driving through that great city.

Indigo forgot her passport, Jason forgot a cable, I was late picking up the passenger van because my GPS wasn’t working properly, so we were late leaving and Art Primo (http://artprimo.com/catalog/index.php) our supplier was closing at 5 pm.

It was a 3 hour drive and it was 2:00 pm when we left. We called Dan from Art Primo and he was amazing and waited for us to arrive. We rolled into Seattle around 6 pm however the traffic was deadly and we finally got to Dan’s shop around 7 pm. We had to leave the film crew at the side of the road because Art Primo didn’t want any filming or camera’s on sight and respectfully so, it was cool and we understood.

Indigo and I drove into the warehouse area, while the film crew had to find shelter from the rain, so they hung out under neath a flat bed trailer. Awaiting us was all of the paint we would be using for the wall. Between Faith47, Titi Freak, Indigo and Peeta we are using over 500 cans of paint in a multitude of colours. The colour palate makes the Wizard of Oz movie once it went colour look passive. It is like sunburst meets skittles meets a fresh fruit market in the caribbean. We are using Montana MTN94 and Belton Molotow amazing aerosol’s and the best you can use for this application.

We met up with Dan and he helped us load up the truck, after that we grabbed the crew, went and grabbed some red bulls and chips for the road trip home and headed out of Seattle.

We made it to Canada safely and no problems at the border. We got back around 11:00 pm, so it was a pretty long day.

So the paint got here safe and sound, it was a successful film shoot and we got to meet Dan at Art Primo http://artprimo.com/catalog/index.php and get our 500 little ones.