RURAL CREATES BC CREATIVE HIGHWAY
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by Michelle Loughery There once was a girl with coal dust in her hair and mural paint on her fingers. She came from Michel-Natal, a town that once sat proud in the East Kootenay mountains, until it was forced into silence — dismantled in the name of tourism and government progress. The community was relocated,
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For over 30 years, Michelle Loughery has carried the torch of a movement born not in boardrooms, but in the coal-streaked valleys of Michel-Natal, BC. Hers is a legacy built not just with paint, but with the hands of many who came before—immigrant tradespeople, artisans, and blue-collar visionaries who saw the blank walls of this
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From the time I was a child my life was exposed to small rural disasters. As a child growing up in a coal-mining town, the essence of dark fear was a normal. I remember my father coming home with his bright blue eyes rimmed with the residual black coal dust and his presence smelling of
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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
ARTIST MICHELLE LOUGHERY 