With four murals slated to be painted on Sudbury buildings during the Up Here urban art and music festival this month, the event’s lasting legacy of public art has ramped up slightly.
Last year saw three murals painted on local buildings, with this year’s one-mural increase coming despite shortcomings in provincial funding forcing organizers to scale down events.
Co-artistic director Christian Pelletier said they’d intended on having five murals installed this year, which would have brought them up to their pre-pandemic output, but the funding shortfall forced them to cancel a mural by Alberta-based artist Katie Green.
Cancelling Green’s mural “is one of the difficult decisions we had to make due to the funding cuts,” Pelletier said.
Artists are coming from throughout North America to paint murals, including Vancouver’s Jean Paul Langlois, Toronto’s Yung Yemi, and JUURI from Oklahoma.
Sudbury’s own Maxine Lemieux has been tapped to paint a mural at 422 Elgin St. after proving herself by painting an electrical box last year as part of the festivities’ Power Up project.
Organizers received 600 submissions from applicants, from whom they selected JUURI.
“She wowed the programming committee,” Pelletier said, adding they already had their eyes on the other three artists, with the stars aligning for them to undertake projects this year.
Murals, he said, were selected as the annual festivities’ centrepiece because they’re for everyone.
“It’s really about bringing some of what would traditionally be more elitist art, like in a gallery space, and make it more public,” he said.
“When you see murals around, it makes your walks around the city more enjoyable.”
All four of this year’s murals are in the downtown area, with the Elgin Street mural just outside of what many would consider the city’s downtown core.
Although building owners approve the artist’s portfolio and view sketches beforehand, organizers strive to give creators artistic control over their pieces.
“We also like to give artists as much leeway as possible to do their stuff,” Pelletier said, noting they are provided with Greater Sudbury’s cultural and historical context, as well as neighbourhood information, to better understand the context behind their pieces.
Between murals, electrical box paintings and permanent art installations, more than 75 pieces of public art have been installed in Greater Sudbury, many of which in the city’s downtown core.
“We’ve got a density of incredible Canadian and international artists you just cannot find in larger cities that have more murals than we do,” he said. “It changes the way that we see our city.”
This year’s mural artists will include:
- Jean Paul Langlois (Vancouver, BC): Mural at Sudbury Theatre Centre, 170 Shaughnessy St.
- Jean Paul is a Métis artist from Vancouver Island, currently painting in East Vancouver. His work is informed by television and cinema, particularly Westerns, ’70s sci-fi, and Saturday morning cartoons. Using ultra-saturated colours, references to art history and well-worn cinema tropes, he seeks to understand the alienation to his own cultural backgrounds, both Indigenous and settler. His work is an examination of his own life through the reinterpretation of family stories using characters and motifs from the pop culture he was weaned on.
- JUURI (Tokyo, Japan/Oklahoma, U.S.): Mural at 81 Larch St.
- JUURI is a Tokyo-born, Japanese+American artist who transforms bare walls into powerful, Japanese-themed artspaces. Currently working from Oklahoma City, JUURI’s colourful, figure-driven work is inspired by folklore, kabuki, and historical characters. She hopes her work is an oasis of quiet in turbulent times and that it sparks a resurgence of love for traditional culture among the new generation, both in Japan and overseas.
- Yung Yemi (Toronto, Ontario): Mural at 93 Cedar St.
- Adeyemi Adegbesan is a Kensington Market–based, self-taught, and multi-disciplinary artist incorporating photography, illustration, mixed-media collage, murals, and assemblage. Reflecting on Black cultural ideologies from pre-colonial, colonial, present day, and future timelines—and across regions, religions, levels of income, and political lines—Adegbesan examines the dichotomy of the richness of Black experiences with the imposed societal homogeneity of “Blackness.” Pulling from these, Adegbesan creates Afro-futuristic portraits embodying themes of history, fantasy, speculative futures, and spirituality.
- Maxine Lemieux (Toronto/Sudbury, Ontario): Mural at 422 Elgin St.
- Maxine Lemieux is a Queer, Métis, and French-Canadian multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker from Sudbury. At 22, she completed her first animated short film “A Great Big Terrible Dream” and painted a power box here in town for this very festival. Maxine loves storytelling through different mediums like illustration and animation. She pulls her inspiration from strange dreams, movements happening around her, and the surrealism she finds in her everyday life.
This year’s electrical box artists will include:
- Pure Plastic: Kyle Ormsby is multidisciplinary artist and graphic designer from Sudbury. Better known as Pure Plastic, Kyle got their start as a designer making posters and merch for bands they played in, but now works for artists, record labels, and festivals across Canada with a focus on posters, album art, and merch design. Drawing inspiration from vintage erotica and the desperation of DIY promotional material, Kyle uses collage-based artwork to evoke feelings of urgency, unease, familiarity, connection, and disconnection—toeing the line between chaos and order. If you’ve been to a few punk shows in Sudbury, chances are you’ve seen their killer work.
- Art by Astronoht: Emily Sportan is a 24-year-old, LGBTQIA+ artist based in Sudbury. She’s been a painter and visual artist for the majority of her life, and her work has slowly transitioned onto digital and animated formats in recent years. Emily’s work has a sense of playfulness, with subject matter focusing heavily on mental health and healing. She currently works as a full time freelance illustrator.
- Featureless Designs: Grant Neegan has dedicated a great deal of time to strengthening his artistic abilities. Working predominantly in oil paint and charcoal on canvas, his work expresses themes of bold contemporary stylistic techniques and pushes the boundaries of traditional painting, forming an organic style of modern abstract impressionism. As an Indigenous artist from Constance Lake First Nation, he is now working towards trying to make a name for himself in Sudbury.
- Mackenzie Roy: Mackenzie Roy is an illustrator, designer, and thing-maker based in Sudbury. Though she studied graphic design in college, she has loved illustration since she was yea high (yea being somewhere between there and here). After graduating, Mackenzie embarked on a curious journey to expand the boundaries of her art. When she’s not doodling, you can find her in the stationary aisle, adding unnecessary flair to her Post-It notes, or indulging in too many ocean documentaries in one sitting.
- Downtown_Oxygen: Known as Marley Smith in the real world, Downtown_Oxygen is an illustrator who grew up in Sudbury but now resides in Ottawa. His art is inspired by the energy of the people he meets, music, comic books, and video games. Marley finds art healing and community building and is currently working towards becoming a full time freelance artist.
- DISANG: Angelina Jacques is a non-binary, french visual artist, painter, and art teacher from Sudbury. They graduated college with a visual arts and design diploma in 2022, and now work as an art instructor. Their art is new age, bold, vibrant, and obscure—maybe even a little macabre. They’ve found a surreal little niche that works for them, and developing that style has been the best journey yet.
The Power Up project locations will be revealed through the official Up Here app, available to download on Google Play and the App Store.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
