Town Hall will be getting a colourful addition thanks to the efforts of a pair of local artists and nearly 100 residents. The addition – a 10’ by 6’ mural depicting a tractor in a field of tulips and trees – was unveiled at the start of the Jan. 29 meeting of council.
For artists Heather Potts and Shannon Hawn, known professionally as PaintPotts, it was the conclusion of a month-long journey.
‘It's huge for me. I don't have anything this scale, so that's kind of nice,” Potts said after the unveiling. “I do have things this scale, but not in a sort of public setting like this. I have a lot of residential, and some commercial, but just not where this many people are going to see it.”
Potts was pleased though, that others would get to see what PaintPotts and a host of residents created.
“That's kind of a pat on the back,” she said.
Karen Blake, culture and community enhancement programmer for the Town of Pelham, said the a “great community effort” made the mural possible.
“It was really encouraging to see kind of the diversity of people who came out to paint,” Blake said. “The finished project had over 95 people who contributed to the painting of the mural.”
That number included members of the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council, art students from E.L. Crossley Secondary School, the Rotary Club of Fonthill, members of the Fonthill Bandshell Committee, the Brushed Buddies painting group, the Pelham Cultural Advisory Committee, the Raiders Lacrosse teams, and community members who stopped by to add their own brush strokes.
The project was made possible by a $5,000 grant awarded last June to the Town by the Ontario Arts Council. Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhoff was at the unveiling on behalf of the province.
“The Ontario Arts Council provides grants across the province, but I'm very confident that very few of those grants will have gone to a project more beautiful than this,” he said.
A condition of the grant was that the work reflect heritage. After community consultations with the likes of the Pelham Historical Society, local schools, and residents in general, local agriculture was a prominent theme that emerged.
Creating work centering on agriculture was something new to Potts.
“We do a lot of landscapes,” she said. “My thing is mountains. I do a lot of mountains and B.C.-themed murals. So, this was a nice little challenge for us, because we've never done an agriculture one before.”
The mural was shown in council chambers at Town Hall and will later be installed outside. A plaque recognizing community members who took part in the project will also be installed.
For more information on the project, visit pelham.ca/mural project.
Correction: The mural will be installed outside Town Hall, not in Council Chambers as earlier reported.