Another St. Albert mural is set to be taken down this spring, as the owner of a downtown surgical facility has informed the city he isn't interested in renewing the lease for the painting exhibited on his building.
Colour Fields II, by local artist Angela Grootelaar, is about 2.25 metres tall and nearly nine metres long. It has adorned the north-facing wall of the St. Thomas Surgical Clinic at 4 St. Joseph Street downtown since 2010.
The mural is an overtly colourful depiction of trees, a river, and green space. Grootelaar was commissioned by the city to create Colour Fields II to replace her original work, Colour Fields, that decorated 7 Perron Street from 1998 to about 2009.
On Jan. 24 city staff informed the citizen-based Arts Development Advisory Committee (ADAC) the owner of the clinic, Dr. Sean Norris, wasn't in favour of entering into a new lease with the city for the mural, and the city will need to remove it and put it into storage this spring.
Norris was not available for an interview before press time.
To remove Colour Fields II, and repair the side of the building — the mural is bolted into the structure of the building, the committee heard — the committee unanimously voted to recommend to council that $14,400 from the city's Public Art Lifecycle and Maintenance Fund be set aside for the work.
The pending removal of Colour Fields II comes less than two months after ADAC made a similar recommendation to council for the removal of the Healthy Communities mural by another local artist, Bella Totino-Busby.
The Healthy Communities mural has been displayed on the south-facing wall of 12A Perron Street for nearly 25 years. The committee heard last month that the owner of 12A Perron Street, Nguyen Scott LLP, also informed the city they weren't interested in entering another lease for the mural's display unless the city was willing to pay for it.
Nguyen Scott LLP did offer the city a below market-rate price for Healthy Communities' display, but “fees for the display of public art are not normal practice as art does not elicit direct measurable income for any party,” Andrea Bowes, a city public art associate, wrote in a report to the committee last month.
The pending removal of both murals this spring follows the removal of yet another downtown mural last summer, the Tribute to the Sisters of Charity Grey Nuns St. Albert by local artist Lewis Lavoie at 18 Perron Street.
Similar to the situation the city finds itself in with Colour Fields II and Healthy Communities, Tribute to the Sisters of Charity Grey Nuns St. Albert was slated for removal because of the significant paint loss and damage the mural had suffered from 22 years of exposure to the elements, and because the owner of 18 Perron Street, Nor-Alta Environmental Consulting, asked the city to remove it. However, Nor-Alta did tell the city it is interested in having another mural installed.
“There's really nothing we can do,” said Coun. Shelley Biermanski, the non-voting council representative on the arts committee, adding that it's entirely within the rights of building owners to decide whether or not they want a piece of public art displayed on their building.
“The only thing that I'm not in favour of is a business wanting to charge for the privilege of showing art on their building,” she said. “I think there are other people that like [having] the art displayed, and having them on municipal buildings is also another option.”
In fact, the committee heard on Jan. 24, the city is now looking to “move away from art on private buildings.”
“It's problematic, it's a lot to manage, property owners change [and] we can't track that easily,” the city's visual arts coordinator Jacilyn Blackwood told the committee. “We have a lot of municipal buildings. Why not use our own spaces and not have to enter into those kinds of agreements that could become problematic?”
While the city owns and operates many buildings throughout St. Albert, the city is directly responsible for just two buildings downtown, St. Albert Place and the St. Albert Business Centre. The city also leases out two additional buildings, Red Willow Place and the Art Gallery of St. Albert.
The combined budget for the removal of all three murals, and any necessary repairs to the buildings they were installed on, is $32,400.
Once Healthy Communities and Colour Fields II are removed, just two city-owned murals will remain downtown: Cultivate Life and Saturday at the Market.
Cultivate Life, by Lavoie and Phil Alain, and Saturday at the Market, by Stan Phelps and Keith Holmes, both adorn 22 Perron Street.
