At home in the paint Anishinaabe artist brings creativity and colour to North End basketball court By: Ben Waldman Posted: 6:10 PM CDT Thursday, Sep. 14, 2023

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This article was published 14/09/2023 (1100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anishinaabe artist Jordan Stranger is combining three of his favourite things — public art, basketball and the North End — with his latest project, a colourful transformation of the outdoor community court at St. John’s Park.

Before Stranger, 34, began rolling out the base layers on the asphalt Monday afternoon, the court was an ordinary slab of grey. By lunchtime on Tuesday, it was beginning to look alive, with shocks of red, orange and blue covering the asphalt surface.

“It’s looking a lot brighter already,” he says, taking a break after finishing a segment of the key, the space around the hoop known as the paint, a term which by project’s end could be applied to the entire court from baseline to baseline.

Stranger, one of the city’s most prominent visual artists and an avid basketball fan, was chosen to give the court a fresh coat by Buckets & Borders, a charitable non-profit based in Regina.

Earlier this summer, the organization, which had previously refurbished four courts in the Saskatchewan capital and one in Toronto, announced it was seeking out proposals by Manitoba artists for the St. John’s Park court. The assignment was right up Stranger’s alley and only a short drive from the Elmwood and Point Douglas areas where he grew up.

Justin Lee, the non-profit’s founder and CEO, was impressed by Stranger’s design, which the artist dubbed Fly Like an Eagle, a reference to the Michael Jordan movie Space Jam and a nod to the bird that has become a signature element of Stranger’s designs.

Lee, 31, played college hoops at Alberta’s Medicine Hat College. In 2015, he and his brother took time off from school with the gap-year objective to play basketball in as many countries as they could. Along the way, the brothers documented their experiences through photography and writing before incorporating their organization as a charity in 2020 and expanding their community-service initiatives.

“What we found was that basketball is a language that connects people,” says Lee, who just oversaw a massive court refurbishing project in Toronto’s east end with the support of NBA Canada and the WNBA.

“We’d often share courts with people who didn’t speak the same language or background, but the game was the common thing that brought us together.”

Winnipeg came on Lee’s radar after he befriended former Winnipeg Wesmen player Terence Ross in Regina. “He’s a great basketball player and leader in the community, and he’s the one who recommended we check out St. John’s Park,” says Lee, who also worked with community activist and journalist Lenard Monkman to engage the local basketball community in the project’s development.

“I just wanted to bring (this project) to a place where I know all the Indigenous players go,” says Ross, 32, now the recreation co-ordinator on Long Plain First Nation. “I’m hoping this will provide for them a place to gather and create their own community, kind of like we did growing up.”

Lee loved the St. John’s Park court as soon as he saw it. Right along Main Street just north of Mountain Avenue, the court was highly visible even before it got painted. He felt the court was the perfect “hoop hub,” easily accessible by transit and easy to locate by players looking for a pickup game.

The St. John’s Park project is the beneficiary of Buckets & Borders’ partnership with Canada Basketball, a national organization that’s providing the bulk of the financial support for the court transformation; in addition to the paint job, the court will also be getting a pair of new square backboards.

Lee estimates the total cost when factoring in the free community celebration after the court is completed should be about $50,000.

The court is the first, but hopefully not the last, the non-profit will touch up in the city. Next summer, the court at the Mayfair Recreation Centre near the intersection of River Avenue and Donald Street will get spruced up, a project Lee says has already been approved by the City of Winnipeg.

For Stranger, who is also working with his father Wayne on a statue of Chief Peguis to be placed on the legislative grounds, the bold court design is “an opportunity to spread a message of love that the North End needs.”

The design honours the four directions, with a medicine wheel and a sun placed at the top of the three-point arcs, thunderbolts blaring along the sidelines, and a blue heart planted at centre court.

“It was important to try to include elements that relate to Earth and keep us grounded, but also inspire people to dunk and fly,” he says, adding that he wishes he could jam.

“I would have loved to see this growing up, and would have loved to play on it,” he says.

It won’t be long before the newly painted court hosts its first pickup run; it’s set to be unveiled to the community Saturday at 11 a.m., followed by a free community lunch, a three-point contest, a performance by DJ Boogie the Beat, and a local all-star game at 1:30 p.m. Members of the Winnipeg Sea Bears will be in attendance.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com