The art of hanging out with the wall

by mukti patel

If you’re walking down 124th street, you might come across a building right around the corner of 105 Ave with vibrant colours, and art on the walls all around that would stop you dead in your tracks. It is an important part of the neighbourhood; something that brings curiosity, vibrancy and adds a pause to the daily routines happening all around these beautiful walls. It is not there out of just passion for the arts but happens through planning, collaboration and the love to bring art into neighbourhoods and lives of the communities living in them. With the values to uplift local artists, educate the public, and highlight different voices of the city, Edmonton Mural Festival curates an experience for the people in our city to witness art, and explore its hidden beauty.

One of the greatest aspects of art is to bear witness to it, and we were extremely privileged to be able to watch the grandiosity of effort, creativity, and resilience that goes behind murals here at Delavoye over the course of ten days in late August. Marcus Coldeway is the curator and one of the festival directors for EMF, who connected Antoine with Argentinian artist Melisa Nocelli, who painted the beautiful mural at our chocolate factory. On the day they were taking off the scaffolding, I had the immense pleasure of talking to both Marcus and Melisa about what Edmonton Mural Festival means to them, and how these projects get integrated into the fabric of the city. Despite being incredibly busy helping organize the festival, collaborating with businesses for these mural projects, and piecing together every small detail for the festival, Marcus spoke about it all extremely humbly, yet passionately. Marcus views mural projects as “inherently community based”, and thinks of these projects as a way to beautify the city while incorporating people around the murals into the fold as well. He also talked about the efforts that go into the festival itself saying that, “Mural festivals are grown from a grassroots group or a certain body of people [who] create relationships and networks with a lot of hard work and years of connections... it’s a beast.”

A beast, it surely is. When viewing a mural, the scale of it all is hard to imagine but seeing Melisa come in every morning and work long hours up on the wall, translating a piece of work from her iPad to a huge wall made me realize just the scope of it. Beyond creating a work of art through collaboration, there is a lot of physical labor involved from building the scaffolding, to staying up at various heights for several hours to finish the mural as soon as possible. I spoke to Melisa about the resilience it takes to give a part of yourself to the mural, and knowing that you will be leaving it behind to pursue other projects, other cities. On the preparation behind it all, Melisa mentions, “It’s a lot of time and you’re [spending it] just painting. [But] you need to be there physically, [with] health and energy.” Beyond the preparations, there are things that come at you unexpectedly; Melisa mentions “the wall itself, the weather, your surroundings” and Marcus added on how there are spills that happen at these walls, things break, you have to change things around according to the surface you're working with; things you can't predict but you can't let it stop you either. Constant resilience. I saw this resilience in Melisa when there was a theft that happened, but she carried on working on the wall the next day with compounded zeal that was extremely admirable. She credits that to the impulse one has as an artist, and excitement to finish the project and watch the fulfillment it brings to the community.

Murals are incredibly important art projects for a city to witness, contain, and celebrate. While local artists get to be a part of their city's fabric because of the Edmonton Mural Festival, we also get the honour of international artists painting murals in a city they inherently become a part of. Marcus brought up how a lot of international artists do not get to stay longer after the project because of other deadlines and often miss the time they had spent painting a wall. These artists often come back to just “hang out with the wall” – which moved me deeply. Spending long hours by a wall in a city that's going to be seen and appreciated by so many people walking by everyday, and then leaving it behind with a piece of yourself is such a wild and beautiful thing.

There is a lot of responsibility that comes with painting murals, and an immense amount of joy that comes out of finishing the project. Every curve on the wall, the crooked surface that these brushes touch, and each conversation that happens by these artworks is what makes our city beautiful, and remarkable. During our brief but poignant conversation, Melisa had mentioned how someone from the neighborhood would stop by everyday during his walks to talk to her and admire the progress she had made on the wall that day. Moments like that are why murals are so important to communities, and why they should be celebrated as such. Explore the incredible murals of the city, go out onto the streets and witness the sheer amount of labour, creativity, and collaboration that went behind them! If you're in the neighbourhood around 124th Street, come see Melisa’s amazing mural right outside Delavoye Chocolate Maker that is inspired by cacao trees, places they originate from, and, well chocolate!