Community artist Grant McLaughlin has a reasonable schedule ahead of him this summer as he prepares to update five murals that are decades old as part of his regular maintenance program.
Murals he plans to address include the Clarke Bros. Circa 1902 at 37 Main Street, The Lost Murals at 88 Second Avenue Northwest, Cruising Main Street at 217 Main Street North, the Ross Wells Tribute to Baseball at the Ross Wells Diamond on Caribou Street East, and The Centennial Mural in Crescent Park.
McLaughlin has already finished work on The Centennial Mural and The Lost Murals artworks. He will likely spend a couple of hours on the weekends refurbishing the remaining artworks.
The estimated cost to complete these repairs is $2,700. This leaves $41,314 in the bank account of the city’s public art committee.
Fewer projects
“It’s not like I’m doing that much. I’m not doing any major overhauls this year. I think more next year there’s (going to be bigger projects),” McLaughlin said.
He explained that he kept the maintenance list to a minimum this year because the new public art committee — which oversees murals — wants to purchase a metal sculpture, while it must decide how to handle the Stormin’ Main Street mural on the side of the former Times-Herald building.
The building’s new owners want to install windows on the east side where the mural is, which means McLaughlin might be tasked with re-creating the mural — on a smaller scale — on panels.
“It’s sad. It’s a big mural. We’ve lost so many of our large murals, and to do it on panels wherever, it would probably end up being small (similar to the firefighters’ mural on First Avenue Northwest),” he said, noting murals are also lost when buildings are demolished or burn down.
Advisory role
McLaughlin can only advise the public art committee on how to refurbish the murals. The committee members must decide whether to stick with commissioning historical artworks or have murals created for businesses that aren’t history related.
Regardless of the approach, McLaughlin thought having an all-purpose committee handle outdoor art was the right idea since bigger centres have similar bodies.
McLaughlin, Gus Froese and Dale Cline are the three men who created Moose Jaw’s murals. McLaughlin credited Cline with pushing the former artwork committee to pursue murals, while Cline was the first to perform early restoration on them.
Fun in the sun
With more sun in the summer, McLaughlin can better determine which murals need touch-ups. Recently he noticed one mural needs stucco work while another requires new tiles and paintwork.
Derek Blais, director of parks and recreation, has accompanied McLaughlin to view the community’s murals. The artist reviewed each of them and what’s been done to them, their condition, and potential problems.
“You go by and you look and you think they’re OK, then you see up close that this one is peeling more,” he said.
Blais has a good grasp of each mural and the materials used, McLaughlin continued. The artist also has documentation about the murals and can recommend whether an artwork needs varnish or a certain piece needs regular work because of a building’s age or cracks in the mortar.
The weather dictates when McLaughlin touches up a mural. Moreover, since there are fewer artworks to refurbish this summer, he isn’t pressed for time to address them. Yet, he keeps his schedule flexible enough to work on the Crescent Park bandstand mural because of regular vandalism.
Future projects
One mural McLaughlin wants to address in the future is at the exhibition grounds. It faces south and is painted on wood, so it fades faster than ones on panels.
A second mural is the Stormin’ Main Street one, a third mural at the ANAVETS Club, while a fourth artwork is a Chinese mural sitting in storage and requiring a new home. Meanwhile, he’ll regularly review murals painted on stucco or brick since those deteriorate quickly.
With a chuckle, McLaughlin said he was pleased that younger artists are now handling maintenance of Mac the Moose since he was usually called to repair it. He figures younger artists will also be called upon in the future to maintain the historic murals.
