Mount Royal University Centennial

    

Picturing MRU’s history

If one picture is worth a 1,000 words, Mount Royal University’s Centennial Mural Mosaic Project will be telling a 200,000-word story.

The Mural Mosaic Project is a 10-metre wide mural made of approximately 200 smaller panels. As a whole it tells one big story, but each panel will also tell its own story.

Lead artist Lewis Lavoie, the director of Mural Mosaic, is thrilled to be showcasing the most significant people and stories in Mount Royal’s 100-year history through this project.

“I’ve always loved having a way of telling a big global story and then zooming in to tell the more detailed stories,” says the St. Albert artist, who has been creating these mosaic murals since 2003.

Though Lavoie creates the overall image for the mural and paints some of the 30 cm x 30 cm hardboard panels, he also invites other artists to paint individual panels.

Joint effort

To maintain the big picture, the collaborating artists may receive a panel that includes background colours and general line guidelines. In some cases they also receive subject suggestions. They do not know where their panel will fit in.

“It is fun to work this way,” says Lavoie. “I love the aspect of working as a group of artists, but there is still independence. It is a great collaborative feeling.”

When the completed mural is installed next year, it will be accompanied by a touch screen that will allow people to click on each individual panel to see who painted it and the story behind it. (See the example of clicking on individual panels with the Heroes mural located in Calgary’s Military Museums.)

“Every panel has a story to tell.”

Celebrating differences

Lavoie loves to see the different styles of all the artists come together. Sometimes he even organizes painting parties so they can work together.

And when it comes to giving artists some guidelines so their piece of the puzzle will fit in nicely, Lavoie says the artists embrace the challenge.

“Most artists like to break rules, but not to destroy something. They go to the line, but don’t cross it,” he says. “Some of the best panels are created that way.”

Painted panels

Several of the first panels were unveiled at Pearls of Wisdom, on May 29 — Martha Cohen, David and Leslie Bissett, Hunter Wight and the star of Pearls of Wisdom Rodney Clark.

More panels will be revealed at the Employee Awards on June 8.

Lavoie is also excited that the Centennial Mural Mosaic will allow him to put into action an idea he’s had for quite some time.
“The completed mural storyline starts in the past and works across to the future,” says Lavoie. “I’m really excited about doing it that way.”

— Anika Van Wyk, June 3, 2010

 

• Watch a video showing the creation of Adam — One Blood, Many Nations, a United Nations mural.

 

MRU artist Mount Royal Library Assistant Judy Trafford has volunteered to paint two panels for the Centennial Mural Mosaic Project. “I think this is so cool,” says Trafford, who got involved after reading about the project on the MRU Centennial website. Trafford, who is a member of the Canadian Institute of Portrait Artists  and Mount Royal’s Art Committee, prefers to work with watercolours and can’t wait to get started on her panels. “I like to paint people. Even when I do landscapes I like to add people,” says Trafford, who has worked at Mount Royal for 19 years. Both panels that Trafford will paint will be of people — Gen. John de Chastelain and singer Paul Brandt. “I chose Gen. de Chastelain in part because he is in the military and my daughter just came back from her second tour in Afghanistan,” says Trafford. While doing research on the General, she also learned her husband’s parents are friends of the de Chastelain family. “It’s great to be able to do a portrait that you have a connection to.” As for Brandt’s portrait, Trafford says she is a fan of his music and, as a horse owner, she looks forward to painting his cowboy hat. “This is such a special project to be able to work on,” she says.