Edmontonians can expect more public art displayed around the city’s downtown core. The Edmonton Mural Festival kicks off this week and Directors Anand Pye and Kyle Parrotta joined CTV Morning Live’s Kimberly Wynn on what artwork you can catch.
Kimberly Wynn: Around Edmonton, you may notice a ton of murals. Well, more are on the way starting this week with the Edmonton mural festival kicking off. How did the Edmonton mural festival come about?
Anand Pye: We wanted to start the festival during the pandemic. We wanted to have outdoor experiences for people and make more public art to beautify spaces that were maybe neglected. We’ve been doing that over the past years by bringing together business owners and wall owners, artists, funders, and the community and making a bunch of murals around the city.
Kim: What a great initiative. How many stops are we seeing here on the tours?
Kyle Parrotta: Well, Edmonton mural fest can’t take credit for all of them. There’s a lot that has been done before and organizations like Rust Magic kind of led the way there. We’ve created three separate tours that are going to be hosted by the local legend Lindork. She’s really excited to do this. It is going to be downtown. 5 or 10, 124 street, and Whyte Ave. as well.
Kim: How are these tours going to work?
Anand: You can get them online and go to edmontonuralfest.com. There’ll be two stops where you can have food and drinks, which will be organized by the tour organizer. Then you can go and check out some of the different murals around that area. Hopefully we’ll have some painters up, and you’ll be able to speak with some artists live, as well as hear the stories behind all the different murals.
Kim: That’s great. There are so many beautiful artworks across the city. How do we determine which ones become part of the tours?
Kyle: Well, there’s a unique blend of magistrate and chemistry. Lindork has quite an enthusiastic and deep understanding of murals in Edmonton, but so do our curators. So we’ve created a path that really tries to emphasize the uniqueness that makes Edmonton, Edmonton, a bit of local and international artists. Size is big and key, but every mural has its own pace.
Kim: How many artists are taking part this year?
Anand: This year, we’ve got six walls. We had over 900 artists apply for the festival this year. So we’re looking for more opportunities in future years, but we’ll have a half a dozen new murals going up and some of them will be stops on the tour.
Kim: Any show stopping pieces that we have to highlight on the show right now, because there are so many wonderful ones.
Kyle: The hero wall, which was our headliner last year, had Rust Magic, who’s very notorious in the city, and we did a lot of engagement with the Bend Arrow Society, the Indigenous group in the northeast. It’s a really big one. It’s on 104 Street. When you come out of a hockey game or you leave camp, it’s massive. It’s seven floors.
Kim: Sounds very Instagramable. The festival starts Thursday and runs for a month. For more information on the tours and the murals, you can go to edmontonmuralfest.com.