Mural at former campaign and constituency office on Danforth Avenue celebrates local landmarks and students’ artwork

By JESSICA SHACKLETON

The empty walls of an office near Danforth and Woodbine avenues were turned into colourful murals by young students last month.

The storefront at 2086 Danforth Ave. was previously Beaches-East York Member of Provincial Parliament Mary-Margaret McMahon’s constituency office, and most recently Ward 19 Beaches-East York city council candidate James Dann’s campaign office.

His campaign team was filled with young people, including Cipher Lippert, Lucy Welch, and Tessa Lynn, all Grade 12 students at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts.

Lippert has always lived in Beaches-East York and is in Dann’s neighbourhood. When he offered an alternative way to volunteer with the campaign, Lippert agreed and immediately got friends Welch and Lynn involved in creating artistic murals for the office’s walls.

“My mom and some other people in the community were getting involved volunteering with (Dann), and he noticed I’m very interested in the arts, so he offered an alternative volunteer opportunity and creative chance; with that open invitation, I asked my friends to come help me out,” said Lippert.

Lynn also lives in Beaches-East York, and Welch is a Riverdale resident.

“I don’t mind travelling here; I spend a lot of time here,” said Welch. “I think it’s really beautiful.”

Dann gave them free rein on what to paint on the two large walls and four half walls inside the office. Though the students took the lead on designing sections, they all worked together to make it happen.

“It was through and through a collaborative effort. There’s not a single wall that someone didn’t help with at some point, whether it was prepping it or taping it or cleaning it; we were all really working together,” said Lippert. “The way that we divided up the work through the design process was separating wall by wall for the artists to do their thing, but we were all there to help out.”

They painted the walls over the Thanksgiving long weekend, where they spent 16 hours straight at work, from 9 a.m. to 3 a.m., because they wanted to get it done.

“It was three days, but we really put in most of the work on the last day,” said Lynn.

Every artist has a different creative process, and Lippert’s collage of local references in yellow and blue started with Procreate, a drawing and design app, to plan it out.

“I didn’t have the exact measurements; I just kind of fielded out a general vibe, brought my iPad in and took a pencil to the wall and just sketched it out and painted it; super simple,” said Lippert. “I wanted them to just be clean, efficient designs, so the smaller walls were really quick and easy to get done, and this (larger) wall was a lot of experimentation.”

Lippert’s wall used a lot of yellow, since that was one of Dann’s campaign colours, and they ran out of it on the last day of painting.

“On the holiday Monday, we fully ran out of yellow paint, and we were diluting it with white, so it was kind of a butter, which is why there’s some differentiation; that was not intentional. Some yellows are much lighter than intended,” said Lippert.

Welch even contributed an old bottle of yellow paint from elementary school that she mixed with primer. Fortunately, their resourcefulness worked out, and all the shades of yellow flowed seamlessly into the design.

Lynn’s main focus was the smaller half walls at the back of the room, and they were of the Leuty Lifeguard Station and the Toronto Fire Station 227.

“Mine was more painting from life. I just had reference photos of the two buildings up for me to paint. They were really quick; well, the first one wasn’t because I was figuring it out and testing the waters,” she said. “I kind of let these two figure out what they wanted to do, and then I did whatever’s left because I didn’t have any strong ideas for the big walls, so I figured I could put something together over here.”

On the opposite wall of the Leuty Lifeguard Station is the Garden Gate Restaurant (The Goof) sign, which Lynn helped immensely with. She floated around and helped fill in the yellow backgrounds as well.

“I had a photo open on my iPad; I sketched it out on the wall and painted everything,” she said.

Welch used a mix of both approaches to bring the Woodbine Beach wall to life.

“I found a photo from 2011, and I traced the shapes around and exaggerated them to be a bit more cartoony, but kept the washroom building, because if I messed that up, I would disgrace the neighbourhood,” said Welch. “After doing all the background, I said I’m just going to put people in all willy-nilly, and I didn’t plan it out or anything; I just wanted to add people, and they were going to be fully drawn, but then I thought, it would be so cool if they were all pink.”

The depiction of the beach is looking at it from the lake, so there was one important element that had to be figured out.

“I remember a big thing we kept discussing with this one was the placement of the CN Tower because we were thinking, when you’re at the beach, it’s supposed to be over there, but the photo she had, the perspective was right there,” said Lynn.

She ended up placing it in the centre, because seeing the CN Tower from Woodbine Beach is a big part of the experience. Along with the skyline, there are tons of little details in the scene.

“I really loved adding tiny little details; there’s kids making sandcastles; a kid with ice cream on the floor; there’s a full swaddled baby; I added a wizard; a little gnome on the washroom steps; and a goth person coming out of the washroom,” said Welch. “I just wanted to think of as many different kinds of people as possible.”

Her wall also included a shoutout to Riverdale along the bottom.

“I live in Chinatown, and there’s an art display of all the Chinese Zodiacs. I’ve always looked at it and thought it was really cool, so I wanted to put them in,” she said.

Lippert, Welch, and Lynn are only in the first few months of senior year at Rosedale Heights, but they are all planning to stay in visual arts after graduating and have their eyes on Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University here in Toronto and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) University in Halifax.

Lippert wants to pursue a Bachelor of Design or Interdisciplinary Arts; Welch enjoys working with material design like makeup or fashion; and Lynn is set on going into illustration.

Rosedale Heights is a specialty arts school that offers comprehensive programs in drama, visual or media arts, instrumental or vocal music, and dance. These courses get more advanced in higher grades.

The three met at school and were always aware of each other, but became a close-knit group last year.

“We’ve had a combination of shared art classes together, and this experience was really cool because it showed me I can actually collaborate really well with people if I like the people I’m working with because I always thought of myself as a very independent worker, but then when I was here sharing my thoughts and ideas with you guys it was really awesome to get feedback from people I respected,” said Lippert.

It was a unique experience that gave the students an outside-of-school opportunity to participate in their neighbourhood (or next door for Welch). Dann said that he felt it was important for young people to feel connected to what’s going on in local politics, as it affects them, too. This was his way of making sure they had a hand in it.

The office is now closed, as the block is slated for development, but the murals were a hard-work project that was admired by all those who came in.