Second coming for Madeline St. mural

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This article was published 16/10/2020 (1996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A familiar face once again looms over the corner of Madeline Street and Harvard Avenue.

This week, mural artist Charlie Johnston completed work on a new mural depicting Jesus Christ on the front wall of the Tabor Baptist Church (710 Madeline St.).

“This is both literally and figuratively the second coming,” said Johnston, an internationally renowned and award winning artist.

Back in 2007, Johnston was commissioned by pastor Rod Giesbrecht to paint a mural of Christ on the front, and another mural on the back, of the church. While painting the mural on Madeline Street, a neighbour took issue, called the police, and the story made international headlines.

“Murals are a narrative medium” Johnston told the Herald in 2019. “They speak to an issue, they tell a story, they’re a public conversation. The controversy was the best way to continue the narrative.”

In the years since then, the mural became a place marker for many in Transcona. But last summer, a change in leadership following Giesbrecht’s retirement had Tabor Baptist Church change its name, albeit briefly, to CityLight Church. The incoming pastors wanted to make a change, so the award winning mural of Christ was covered up, the wall restuccoed. 

“We thought long and hard about what to do, but we decided having that newer look for the new church coming in was a good idea,” pastor Andre Lederer told the Herald in July 2019. 

However, following the abrupt departure of the incoming leadership in December 2019, Giesbrecht is back at Tabor Baptist Church as interim pastor. One thing the congregation wanted was a new mural.

“The question was, do you try replacing the past, or do you move into a new future?” Giesbrecht said.

Following lengthy discussions, the congregation decided to move on.

“Poetically, it’s also the return of the piece,” Johnston said. “It really continues the narrative in a way, rather than trying to repaint the original piece.”

“The Bible says, “Jesus is the light of the world’,” Giesbrecht said. “We wanted that idea, but you don’t see anything when you look at light. How do you paint light without looking like a white wall?”

Giesbrecht and Johnson discussed the problem, and came up with a novel solution.

“Another truth about God is he lives in dichotomy,” Giesbrecht said. “Light is the same way.”

Depending on how the sunlight hits the mural, different aspects of the painting will be illuminated.

“The light is a dynamic element of the picture,” Giesbrecht said. “It is one that requires the sun and movement of it. The tension that exists in our reality is a truth that gives that idea of God existing in so many tensions. This is our effort to make that tension-truth evident in a way that you can understand.”

Johnston added that the original stucco job featured a different texture, which was incorporated into the original portrait.

“The whole wall was a close cut portrait of Jesus,” he said. “By doing the mural at that scale I was able to create that verisimilitude. The stucco was almost analogous to the texture of the pores on his skin at the monumental scale.”

As a mural artist, Johnston is no stranger to having his work disappear from the public sphere.

“Of the volume of work I’ve created, only roughly half remains,” he said. “It feels really good to continue this, that the valuation of this continues, even when it doesn’t exist.”

Sometimes things just take a while to find their place, Johnston has learned.

“If you give something enough time, it becomes what it was meant to be,” he said,as he put the finishing touches on the new mural.

“Great art can tell you a story on the first blush and the second blush, and I think we’ve achieved this again with this mural,” Giesbrecht added. 

Sheldon Birnie
Community Journalist

Sheldon Birnie is a reporter/photographer for the Free Press Community Review. The author of Missing Like Teeth: An Oral History of Winnipeg Underground Rock (1990-2001), his writing has appeared in journals and online platforms across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. A husband and father of two young children, Sheldon enjoys playing guitar and rec hockey when he can find the time. Email him at sheldon.birnie@freepress.mb.ca Call him at 204-697-7112

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