I was commissioned as part of a team by City of Calgary to paint a utility box for the Kensington neighborhood, in partnership with Alberta Printmakers and Loft 112. Big thanks to everyone involved for the opportunity and amazing experience. For those in the area who would like to check it out in person, it’s located on the corner of 10 St and 5 Ave NW, on the corner where the Shell gas station is.
The images on boxes our team did were inspired by real stories from the neighborhood, both current and historical. A part of our research process was interviewing residents and business owners.
Here it is. The street hockey scene here is inspired by the fact that Kensington is one of those neighorhoods where kids can still be seen playing out on the street at night, being watched by one another's parents and grandparents. It's an innercity neighborhood that still has that village feel.
The kids on a date are eating fried chicken. This story came from Russ, the owner of Chicken On the Way. His restaurant on 14th St has been in the neighborhood for nearly 60 years. He wears a Chicken On the Way jacket and is recognized a lot on the street as the owner. He's had old couples approach him, telling him that they had their first date at his restaurant. It had a cafe back in the day.
This story is about a hobby pigeon racer that used to live near Chicken On the Way. His pigeons could often be seen in and around his house. When he died, his kids wanted to sell the house, so they released all his pigeons. With the pigeons being released upon the neighborhood, they quickly became a problem, pooping on everything. So they were all eventually killed.
This story comes from Bob, owner of Hot Wax Records on 10 St near Memorial Drive. His store mostly consists of vinyl records, and he talked about how people will sometimes come into his store just to take pictures of themselves...and then leave.
No real story here, just a personal homage to biking and the active lifestyle taking place along the river on the other side of Memorial Drive and beyond.
These images on the box are NOT digital prints. The line art was screen printed, and in some cases, inked by hand (long story, ugh). Everything was printed, inked and painted onto rice paper, and then glued onto the utility box using a special clear coat. The nature of the rice paper is such that after applying the adhesive coating material, the paper dries clear, showing only what’s been painted / printed /inked on it. I did need to spend a day or two painting over the areas where the paint didn’t show through the paper enough.
All of the research my partner, Jack Bride and I did for this project involved either talking to decades-long residents of the area or reading about them at the library. The stories told to us had a “memories of the good old days” feel to them, inspiring me to take a Mid-Century Modern direction for my imagery. Here are some process images of the sketch phase:
This was the final preliminary sketch of the box, but as you can see, the end result didn’t turn out that way. Due to time and budget constraints, the community garden image had to be scrapped.
Here are the digital images. I tried to match the colors in the actual painting of the prints, and the final result (in my opinion) actually turned out better than the digitals.