Youth use art to convey reasons to love Canada
The project, in honour of Canada's 150th birthday, incorporates 150 Canadian themes.

thestar.com
By SAMMY HUDES
April 24, 2017

For three young artists, shining a light on Canadian music takes three different approaches. Shining a light on Canada as a whole takes at least 150.

It’s a Friday afternoon and Frances Potts, Gloria Romy Asse and Rowell Soller are busy painting a mural together.

Potts is working on an image of Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie while Soller has created an abstract of rapper k-os. Asse has focused her efforts on a portrait of DJ and producer Kaytranada.

The three have little in common, but are joined on the same canvas to represent the diversity of Canadian music.

The mural is one of 60 being painted in honour of Canada’s sesquicentennial anniversary.

The project, called 150+ Reasons We Love Canada, is led by VIBE Arts, which asked Canadians to submit reasons they love Canada.

These reasons became the themes for the 60 murals being painted across the country by 500 children and youth at schools, shelters, libraries, hospitals and other agencies.

“The themes and the canvasses were given to the youth,” said Julie Frost, executive and artistic director of VIBE Arts. “One of the themes was peace, so how do you interpret peace? The children and youth would then figure out what that looks like and then paint.”

Asked to depict Canadian music, Potts, 21, said she wanted to pay homage to Downie.

“We tried to represent different genres of music,” she said. “I chose to include him because I grew up listening to The Tragically Hip. They’re a great part of Canada music-wise and I thought it would be a fun part to represent the rock or alternative rock genre of Canadian music in our mural.”

K-os is included in abstract form, representing chaos itself.

“It’s controlled chaos, my style,” said Soller, 24. “This is what he would look like in abstract form, in my eyes.”

He said k-os is often forgotten in discussions about Toronto’s rap scene.

“People need to know that he’s from here because people don’t really know a lot of musicians from Canada and when they think of them, they think of Drake and Justin Bieber maybe,” said Soller. “They’ve got enough promotion globally so that’s why I put someone who’s not really as known as Drake. He’s known, but not really known.”

Asse, 19, also aimed to highlight a lesser known musician in Montreal, hip hop producer Kaytranada.

“I wanted to shine a light on some underground music culture,” she said.

Frost said the artwork, and the artists behind them, come from a diverse group of youth from each Canadian province and territory. She said VIBE aimed to ensure many different communities were involved, including children with special needs and racialized, LGBTQ and indigenous youth.

Other paintings depict everything from Justin Trudeau to maple syrup to the TransCanada Highway.

Each of the 60 murals will be unveiled May 26 at Scarborough Town Centre. They’ll then go on display in Toronto’s subway stations throughout July and August, while digitized versions will be showcased on about 300 billboards across the country.

All 60 will also be displayed in 15 airports across Canada.

“Art is a unique way of communicating things that are often hard to convey,” Frost said. “Sometimes art acts as a vehicle or a conduit to get things that are deeper and unreachable and it brings them to the surface. It’s also a universal language. Art can respond to all cultures, all languages and it can be accessible in that way as well.”