Canada 150 community art project painted by hundreds of P.A. residents

Prince Albert’s contribution to the Canada 150 Mosaic Mural art project was unveiled at the Alfred Jenkins Field House on Friday afternoon.

The eight-by-eight-foot mural is composed of 450 four-by-four inch ceramic tiles, each individually painted by a member of the community. From a distance the tiles merge to form an image of P.A. on the bank of the North Saskatchewan River. At the bottom of the mural there are train tracks to represent the city’s connection to the rest of Canada. Approximately 150 communities across Canada created murals for the project, which recognized the country’s sesquicentennial.

City of P.A. arts and cultural co-ordinator Judy MacLeod Campbell said the field house was chosen to house the work because it is an accessible space with a lot of people traffic.

“We felt overall for a good cross-representation of our community to view it, that the Jenkins is one of our largest leisure facilities with a pretty vast group of users, so we just felt that it was the prime location,” she explained.

Members of the public decorated the tiles at a series of workshops at the Mann Art Gallery (MAG) and E.A. Rawlinson Centre on Monday and Tuesday. MacLeod Campbell said registration filled up a week and a half ahead of time.

“There was a lot of interest in it and it did worked out really well. We ended up having just enough tiles,” said MAG educator Lana Wilson, who helped facilitate the workshops.

“The hardest part of painting the tile really was deciding what to paint on it. You have this little four inch tile and you’re thinking … ‘How can I depict something about myself or my community in such a small space?’” she said.

“It was really neat to see what they ended up coming up with.”

For more on this story, please read the Prince Albert Daily Herald¹s subscription-based print or e-editions.