Fighting graffiti with art, the municipality recently commissioned
a large piece of art to adorn the back wall of Composite High School,
a popular piece of real estate for local taggers and vandals.
Calgary-based artist Wil Yee was brought in after a successful
application proved he was not only a talented artist, but knew and understood
the unique history of the region.
“It’s just about incorporating the textures of the land and the
critters into the piece,” explained Yee.
After learning of the art proposal, Yee took to the Internet to
research the region, taking time to incorporate the region’s namesake animal,
the famed Peter Pond, and Composite’s two miner mascots.
“This is our first public art commission for the municipality,”
said Connor Buchanan, culture co-ordinator with the municipality. “We assisted the
Beautification work unit because they have a graffiti abatement program. Our
municipality spends money cleaning up and wiping out graffiti, just like so
many cities around Canada,
and internationally. Many municipalities have introduce new programs that allocate money to public art commissions from
their Graffiti Abatement budgets, in essence taking the amount of money that
would be put towards cleaning up graffiti and putting it into a commissioned
piece of public art, because it has the same effect."
“So by putting a beautiful piece of public art up that the
community, and in this instance, the school has ownership over, will hopefully
abate people from tagging, because this wall on Composite High School
gets tagged a lot.”
Jillian MacDonald, beautification co-ordinator with the
municipality, says the region has a team dedicated to graffiti cleanup between
April and October each year, even putting summer students to work on the time
consuming project.
The municipality spent more than $50,000 last year on graffiti
abatement projects and removal, and while tagging and graffiti is a problem all
throughout Fort McMurray,
the Composite wall is a particularly troublesome spot.
“Composite also had to deal with removal of graffiti on the wall
we are painting on,” said MacDonald. “It became a problem wall and during the
2010-11 school year, they spent nearly $32,000 cleaning it up.”
MacDonald says a major
deterrent for graffiti taggers is the level of community engagement in the
piece.
“It was a way to engage youth in graffiti abatement in a way that
wasn’t telling them, ‘No, no, no,’ all the time,” she explained. “So we thought
it would be really awesome to get a street artist up that could do a mural with
them.
“It’s about being proactive and getting students involved, showing
them that there is an actual profession in street art and that they don’t have
to go around tagging people’s property illegally. They can get in and hone
their craft like amazing artists like Wil.”
Yee says he hopes his piece, and the amount of community
participation that went into it, will help youth and adults alike understand
that street art and graffiti-style art doesn’t have to be done illegally.
“I worked with the City of Calgary
on a few graffiti abatement projects, just to try and create a bridge between
the community and the participants to do go about and do graffiti or vandalize
property. It’s about creating that awareness that there is an outlet for
creative expression, as well as repercussions if it hurts the community,”
explained Yee.
“It’s such a huge, huge honour to have this wall and get to work
on it with the community and the students. For me, it’s a truly unique and fun
experience.”
The mural will be unveiled at a ribbon cutting ceremony Monday at
10 a.m. on the backfield at Composite
High School, and
McMurrayites are encouraged to go down and check out the piece and chat with
the mind behind the brush while Yee finishes clutter his work this weekend.
The murals were commissioned as part of the Graffiti Abatement Mural Program. The basis of the project is simple: when a mural goes onto a wall, it is less likely that the wall will be tagged or vandalized with graffiti. When large spaces become less vulnerable to the threat of graffiti, it means that property owners and municipalities spend less on graffiti removal and remediation of that space. 
Once all the submissions have been gathered, a local selection panel (comprised of community volunteers including representation from the arts community) reviews the proposed designs and picks the artist and proposal that they feel will be the best fit for our region. Murals are usually completed by the end of September.
