Watch video on Project TOMATO RED MURAL
Youth Crew on Mural -now on Big Screen
Premiering March 3 2018 Kamloops Film Festival
There is always a story behind every mural. There is always more than paint on the wall. The paint may be attached to the building, and the artist may have let us paint their image, but it is the people of the walls that is the true heart. The Tim McGraw mural is a powerful image. The cowboy hat, the nod, the howdy we are welcoming you to a true western town. The best cowboys in the area were the First Nations cowboys of the area, rodeo legends and keepers of the range. The dichotomy is, the large famous cowboy was painted with the help of a crew of First Nations Youth and the true country soul belongs to those youth. They did not care who or what we painted, only that we painted. That we came together to tell stories and share lives and build a project that would help them use and gain skills, and help with tourism and be part of the future path they wanted.
When the mural was chosen to be in the International Film Tomato Red, we all came back together again. Watching with eager eyes, giggly with excitement. The crew has expanded through the years, and small children surrounded us. The biggest surprise was that the author of the book, Tomato Red, is based out of the area of another project that I was blessed to help create. The Route 66 Mural City in Cuba, Missouri. If this is not enough of a connection, wait until you see the film. The story and the very reason the mural projects are a key strategy to rural communities everywhere, is in the movie.
Youth want to paint a picture for an inclusive future for themselves and their communities. They are the steam to the stem learning that rural communities need to engage and connect with everyone in the population that lives under the big blue skies.
We are all Blue under the sky and we all are part of the economic and social power each community holds. This project was a youth training rural creates tourism based project.
The project was the fourth in a string of Michelle Loughery Mural projects, including the Vernon Mural Project, and the Route 66 Mural Project. The youth learned employmemt skills, trade skills and art and tourism skills. The early projects innitiatied the P6 economic art philosphy to use created art as a economic and social leverage tool for rural communities. http://www.michelleloughery.org
ARTIST MICHELLE LOUGHERY 