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UBCO unveils two-storey mural in downtown Kelowna

The mural was painted over five weeks by UBCO visual arts students
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The mural is located on St. Paul street across from the CTQ Consultants office. (Contributed)

With a large concrete canvas and loads of paint, a UBC Okanagan visual arts instructor turned a summer art class into a two-storey downtown mural.

Throughout a five-week class in July and August, students met and worked collaboratively to paint a colourful mural adjacent to the CTQ Consultants building on St. Paul Street.

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Here are the final pics of my summer school mural class @fccs.ubco !! A UBC first !! . We partnered with a local engineering firm with a long term commitment to environmental sustainability. @ctqkelowna . This mural celebrates a particularly cool project . . Harrison Hot Springs water management system is connected to a sensitive salmon habitat and their original pump station was devastating the salmon stock. The CTQ team designed a new system that dropped the mortality rate from 100% down to an astonishing 2%!! . The project used a modified pump system designed in 250 BCE in Greece by a philosopher named Archimedes. The Archimedes pump was scaled up so that the largest of salmon could pass through without injury. The coolest part of the project for me was that CTQ initiated an environmental study to figure out which colour was least offensive for spawning salmon... and apparently the salmon unanimously chose canary yellow!!! Wtf ?!? I had no idea salmon also loved Canary yellow ?!?... Soooooo here it is!! Our giant psychedelic salmon and a Archimedes pump, in canary yellow ;;)) #mural #summerMurals #canadianPainting #beautifulBritishColumbia #ProtectWhatYouLove #PaintWhatYouLove #conservation #paintforapurpose #water #salmon #Artivism #saveOurSalmon #egineeringABrighterFuture @pangeaseed @seawalls_ @muralfestival

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“UBC’s department of creative studies partnered with CTQ Consultants to create this exciting new art education experience for (Bachelor of Fine Arts) students,” said UBCO fine arts instructor David Doody. “This course gave students an experience common to painting murals including the use of projectors, mechanical lifts, and a variety of paint applications and techniques.”

CTQ Consultants, an engineering, planning and urban design firm based in downtown Kelowna, was enthusiastic about supporting the first UBCO mural course, according to founding partner Matt Cameron.

Cameron helped to create the school’s first-ever engineering scholarship.

“Although we submitted many of our projects to help David create the CTQ mural, showcasing our 2020 theme of community, we asked that he select an appropriate reflection of what CTQ means to our community and what the community means to CTQ,” said Cameron

Doody chose CTQ’s Harrison Hot Springs project.

That project, which the mural honours, saw CTQ tasked with replacing an old pump at the springs which were inefficient in moving floodwaters, resulting in a 100 per cent mortality rate for the fish. Cameron replaced the pump with one devised in 250 BC — an Archimedes Screw pump — painted it a “fish-friendly canary yellow” and added power to it.

Once operational, the pump reduced the fish mortality rate to under 2 per cent and allowed for the safe handling of floodwaters.

Doody said street art initiatives like this one — and the ones he works on as artistic director of the Uptown Rutland Business Association’s Uptown Mural Project — have revitalized urban centres across the country.

“These vibrant and bold contributions to the neighbourhood, are celebrated by locals and tourists all year round,” he said. “They are recognized as important sites for contemporary Canadian culture.”

READ MORE: More murals coming to Uptown Rutland

READ MORE: Hip three-storey food and music hub proposed for downtown Kelowna

Do you have something to add to this story, or something else we should report on? Email: michael.rodriguez@kelownacapnews.com


@michaelrdrguez
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