The neighbourhood around Capilano University in Sechelt is now a little brighter and more colourful, thanks to the addition one of the biggest wall murals on the Sunshine Coast.
The 25-by-10-metre mural, created by Sechelt artist Ben Tour, depicts an eagle in a wings-up, pouncing posture, and is set on a dynamic background of hard-angled segments in shades of blue.
Tour, 41, said he likes using raptors as mural subjects, and thinks it suits the Cap U location, which is also known as kálax-ay in the language of the shíshálh First Nation.
“The eagle and other birds of prey, in a lot of cultures, stand for courage, freedom, power, intelligence, amazing vision. All these things jumped out at me as something that would inspire the students,” he said. “I also wanted to brighten up the area and make people feel good. That mural looks incredible against a clear blue sky. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback on it.”
The mural took Tour about a month to complete, about twice as long as expected thanks to several weather delays, plus the time it took to prepare the grey surface on the wall of the campus building facing on Inlet Avenue.
“The base was porous brick,” Tour said in an interview, after completing the project earlier in November. “A separate crew did a lot of work making that wall into something you could paint on. There must be ten coats on it. I’d probably still be priming that wall if I’d had to do it myself.”
The mural is one of nine that were commissioned through the Vancouver Mural Festival for Cap U’s campuses on Vancouver’s North Shore and the Sunshine Coast, in celebration of the school’s 50th anniversary.
“In planning for the anniversary, we sought ideas that would enhance the student experience, improve our physical environment, and showcase the university to the broader community,” said Laureen Styles, a vice president of the university, with responsibility for the Sunshine Coast campus. “I think [Ben’s] mural really fits with the intention of the project, which was to bring together and connect, and to celebrate talent and pride in community.”
Ontario-raised Tour, a father of two, moved 10 years ago to the Sunshine Coast from the Lower Mainland, where he did several projects for the Vancouver Mural Festival. Tour’s local work includes a wall installation at Beachcomber Coffee Company in Gibsons, and another eagle-inspired mural at Cedar Grove Elementary School in Elphinstone. He received a Juno nomination in 2014 for his artwork for Bodhi Jones’s album Bones, and will have an exhibition at The Kube Gallery in Gibsons next spring.
Tour likes to take on different kinds of projects, but believes murals are a hotter creative medium than ever. “In the last eight to 10 years, there’s been a real boom in street art,” he said. “The international mural scene is one of the biggest things in art right now. You get a lot of artists who used to do gallery shows are now doing massive murals all over the world.”
