The testimonial Grey Nuns mural that was taken off display in downtown St. Albert last summer will likely be removed from the city's public art collection and returned to the muralist Lewis Lavoie, according to an administrative report presented to the civic arts committee last week.
The Grey Nuns, formally known as the Sisters of Charity, is a Roman Catholic institution for religious sisters that dates back to 1738. Among many other things, the Grey Nuns worked as nurses and teachers in the residential school system. The institution was founded by Marguerite d'Youville, a French-Canadian woman who, in 1990, became the first Canadian-born person to be declared a saint.
In 2001, the City of St. Albert commissioned Lavoie, a local artist known for his work with Mural Mosaics, to create the mural, which is called Sisters of Charity — Grey Nuns of St. Albert, to commemorate the nuns' contributions to the area, such as St. Albert's first school (red brick schoolhouse) and seniors centre, which is now a long-term care facility called Youville Home.
The mural, which is about 18 metres long and 2.5 metres tall, was installed on the south-facing wall of 18 Perron Street for about 22 years. It depicts a one-room schoolhouse in the middle, a nun preparing medicine for a child, as well as a portrait of another nun on the left, and a nun on a swing set on the right side. It's made up of 15 wood-composite panels.
As the Gazette reported last summer, the citizen-based Arts Development Advisory Committee (ADAC) recommended to council the mural be removed after the city received a request from the building owner to have the mural removed because of deterioration. The Grey Nuns mural is one of three downtown murals that have either been removed or are set to be removed this summer.
A report presented to the ADAC on Feb. 28 explains that the deterioration is most prominent on the three right-most panels, “where exposure to sun has resulted in 40-70 per cent loss of paint and flaking in the last two right panels, and significant loss in the upper right corner of the third far right panel.”
“Over the central 11 panels there is evidence of the wood substrate swelling and disrupting the paint layer, evident as paint cupping, bubbling and splitting,” reads the report, which was written by city public art associate and registrar Andrea Bowes.
“The wood panel edges have swollen over time and there is paint loss along those edges.”
Besides all the paint issues, Bowes also found one of the middle panels “has a large gauge in the bottom left corner.”
“The extent of deterioration today is such that conservation of the panels would be cost prohibitive,” Bowes wrote, adding that a cost estimate provided to the city by a conservator in 2013 suggested that repairing the work could cost as much as $25,000. Since the estimate is 10 years old, and the mural deteriorated more in the time since the last estimate, it would likely cost the city much more to repair the piece now, Bowes wrote.
According to Bowes' report, the mural's deterioration and subject matter also means it is unlikely the city would be able to find a new place to display it.
“The work is site-specific, and the subject matter makes finding a suitable alternate location difficult and unlikely,” Bowes wrote.
“The City of St. Albert does not have suitable long-term storage facilities to house the artwork [and] storing the work does not meet the overall purpose of public art whereby the collection is on display for the enjoyment and enrichment of the people of St. Albert.”
As such, city administration will be asking the ADAC to decide later this month whether or not the mural is kept in storage for the foreseeable future, or returned to the artist, Lavoie, who has told the city he'd like to take the mural back to keep as a record of his work. The Gazette was unable to contact Lavoie.
'When it rains, it pours'
Emily Baker, the chair of the ADAC and curator at the St. Albert Art Gallery, said in an interview the sudden loss of so many downtown murals is “one of these 'when it rains, it pours' situations.”
“It is surprising because it's something we're known for — we're known for having this beautiful vibrant downtown, having this public art everywhere, and ... we got a lot really quickly that all came out of the downtown area,” she said. “It feels like one of those things where a lot of things happen all at once, and part of this might be like a life-cycle thing [because] murals especially don't last forever.”
“We're kind of just in that weird limbo period where we've had some losses and things come down, and it's part of the normal life-cycle of public art, it's just clustered in a way that feels like surprising and shocking.”
While over half of the murals downtown are being removed in less than year, Baker said she thinks the positive side of the situation is the community has a great opportunity to install some new art.
“A lot of these pieces have been around for a while and we've been looking to bring more public art into the city's collection, and that's something that city staff have been working on and the ADAC has been talking about, and it feels like there's a lot of potential and opportunity,” Baker said.
“It's got a lot of sadness saying goodbye to pieces we love, but a lot of possibility at the same time.”
On Feb. 28, the ADAC heard one such opportunity for new public art, although not downtown, is the upcoming mural planned for the cement barrier wall inside the Fowler Athletic Park on Sir Winston Churchill Avenue.
The committee heard an artist has been chosen, and more information will be announced in the coming months after contracts are signed.
