You won’t miss the route to the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt ever again. Just follow the banners.
Devon Blean came up with the idea when she heard that some people did not know how to find the Sunshine Coast Arts Council’s (SCAC) main venue of gallery and studios situated at the corner of Trail and Medusa. As a banner painter herself – she co-ordinates the kids’ design competition to produce the annual painted banners that are now hanging in Sechelt’s Civic Square – she considered banners to be a great guide to a location.
She turned the concept over to artist Ian MacLeod who ran with it and created digitally the two-sided banners that now line Dolphin Street in Sechelt between Inlet and Trail, plus one banner around the corner on Trail. The tail which hangs from the main banner has the Arts Council logo along with directional arrows.
“It was so nice to think of a project and have someone else do it,” quipped Blean at an opening reception for the Boulevard of Banners on March 10.
MacLeod told those gathered for the reception that he had first thought of painting the banners but the timing didn’t coincide with the kids’ painting dates. He hit on the idea of examining the work of many Coast artists to find small colourful sections of existing work that would reproduce well on the vertical banners.
There were problems. The first artist he asked, Elaine Seepish, had already sold the work he wanted and she had to track it down. Another artist, Kim LaFave, replied that he had painted over the desired artwork. Eventually MacLeod, concerned that the digital print idea was not going to work, reproduced one of his own designs with success and chose seven other Coast artists to participate. He mysteriously kept quiet about who offered which banner. We may never know unless the Arts Council decides to hold a fundraising quiz to guess the artist!
Besides Seepish and LaFave, other artists involved are Jen Drysdale, Leif Kristian Freed, Kristjana Gunnars, Morley Baker, Ian MacLeod and Donna Balma. With the co-operation of the District of Sechelt, the banners will be up for a year and the SCAC hope to make it an annual event.
