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Colour comes to Keremeos with new Indigenous murals

Local artists creating murals around Keremeos and Cawston

Keremeos is getting more colourful thanks to local Indigenous artists.

The new murals have been installed both outside and inside spaces in the community, with the latest going up inside the Ambrosia building.

Sharifah Marsden is leading the project, with local artists Shawnisha Tallio and Shianna Allison working and learning alongside her.

Allison and Tallio are both also members of the Lower Similakmeen Indian Band. Marsden is a member of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation with an extensive career including work on Western Canada’s largest public mural on the outer wall of the Orwell Hotel in Vancouver.

Part of the work with murals in the Similkameen has been about passing down the knowledge that Marsden has learned to the next generation of emerging Indigenous artists.

“There’s not a lot of female mural artists,” said Marsden. “So I think it’s really important because it is such a huge platform to relay and teach other people about the culture. I think it’s important for us to keep teaching other young women how to do murals and how to showcase their art and, and uplift them in that way.”

The murals in Ambrosia have several different designs; the designs of the murals in the laundry rooms feature bears and the mountains of the valley and the main floor hallway’s design shows the stages of the Ambrosia apple from bud to fruit.

The mural in the lobby is entitled We Are Blessed, and features the eagle as the bird closest to the creator, as well as the sun and eagle feathers, all important parts of Indigenous culture. That showcase of Indigenous art and culture was an important part of the designs and creation of the mural, both as a way of expressing culture and opening up conversations.

“It’s a good way to bring up topics of Indigenous artists or Indigenous people. It creates a nice place for other people to learn and people who do know some knowledge to share and spread it,” said Tallio.

As a primarily digital artist, getting out and doing a public mural has been a novel experience.

“There’s people here that I learned more of, and they’ve lived here so long and they really like to see more of my culture and they really appreciate it. It’s a little bit different to see that,” said Allison.

READ MORE: Cawston Community Hall gets colourful with Indigenous inclusive mural

The new murals in Keremeos are the latest pieces of public art in the community, following an 2SLGBTQIA+ design that was installed on the Cawston Community Hall in 2022.

Marsden and Allison both worked on the Cawston mural as well.

“I like to show like every type of thing, I did the mural for Cawston hall, and I like to include my type of culture with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community,” said Allison.

Another mural, entitled Love, has also recently been added to the outer wall of Benja Thai in Keremeos. The design was a collaboration by Indigenous and Settler members of the Similkameen and painted by Marsden, Allison, Chila Louis, Tristan Boisvert and arts students from Similkameen Elementary Secondary School. The mural incorporates Indigenous, Thai and Settler imagery representing the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and the feminist movement in the art form of Native American culture.

The most recent set at Ambrosia came together after Marsden had heard the Lower Similkameen Community Services Society was looking for a mural artist for their new building. The tight confines of the halls, lobby and laundry rooms of the building presented interesting challenges that helped spark some creativity in how the murals were designed and applied.

“With the eagle in the front we used a projector, but then with the geometric design we had to make a complicated stencil, and basically a 30-foot stencil and applied that to the wall for the floral design,” said Marsden.”With each area that we have to put this image on, we have to decide what we’re gonna do with it, how we’re going to approach it, and then you learn different techniques of how to, how to enlarge a design onto a wall.”

There is still another mural yet to be finished, and once they are all completed there will be a small community gathering to recognize the artists and their work.

All murals were made possible by grants from the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Fortis BC’s Community Giving Grant, the Lower Similkameen Indian Band’s support and financial contribution as well as LSCSS, Benja Thai and The Village of Keremeos.

To report a typo, email: editor@pentictonwesternnews.com.

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Brennan Phillips

About the Author: Brennan Phillips

Brennan was raised in the Okanagan and is thankful every day that he gets to live and work in one of the most beautiful places in Canada.
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