The Arts

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Silo can he go? Mural artist tackles huge project

By: Carolin Vesely

Posted: 08/25/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Artists Charlie and Sarah Johnston in front of their local mural Layin' Down Tracks; Charlie is currently in Georgia working on a mural twice its size.

While walking-tour participants admire his handiwork on the walls of Winnipeg, mural artist Charlie Johnston is in the Deep South working on the biggest project of his career.

And he's basically working for peanuts.

"It's the biggest thing I've ever done -- by two," says Johnston over the phone from Colquitt, Ga. (pop. 1,939), where he's been since July 20, painting a 360-degree mural on a 27,000-square-foot peanut silo.

Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the mural was commissioned to celebrate Colquitt playing host to the 7th Global Mural and Cultural Tourism Conference, taking place Oct. 26-29. It will wrap around the four cylinders that comprise the silo, and feature a "monumental image of an Everyman peanut farmer" examining his crop.

So how does a Manitoba boy end up getting a gig to create the Peachtree State's biggest-ever piece of outdoor wall art?

"They put out a call and I answered," says Johnston, 47, who is among the most prolific and best-known of the artists behind Winnipeg's 500-plus murals. "They needed someone who could handle this kind of scale."

Johnston knows of monumental images. His -- and Manitoba's -- biggest mural to date is Layin' Down Tracks, a multi-wall, 14,000-square-foot mural at 190 Disraeli Freeway. It's the second largest in Canada. He has won five Mural of the Year Awards for such notable works as Road to Valour (1240 Ellice Ave.), Jesus (Tabor Baptist Church, 710 Madelaine St.) and Manitoba Hydro Power Smart (1637 Portage Ave.).

Considering it took him two weeks to just wash the 30-metre-tall peanut silo, the father of four teenagers says he'll be lucky to get home by Christmas.

"It's all by hand and it's all by roller," says Johnston, who just started priming the building last week. He's been putting in 10-hour days in hot, humid weather that's been between 32 C and 43 C since he arrived.

Although his wife, fellow artist Sarah Johnston, came to help him set up, he's currently living alone in a "big, sprawling" former school and boarding house.

You know you're not in the Prairies anymore when, "on the walk to the silo, someone had a cactus in their yard, another person had a banana tree... This is the true south."

And that fabled southern hospitality?

"It's definitely not a myth," says Johnston. "Besides the house, they also gave me a decommissioned police car to use to get around."

carolin.vesely@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 25, 2010 D3

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