Mural tackles graffiti, celebrates history

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This article was published 12/10/2011 (5337 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new mural in Wolseley is tackling the community’s graffiti problem with a hand-painted historical record.

Painted by Manitoban artist Sarah Collard, the mural appears on the north wall of The Nook Diner on Sherbrook Street and tells the story of the building’s 60-plus year history.

“We were looking for a way to deal with the graffiti we were getting on that wall,” says Athina Parasidis, co-owner of The Nook.

“We had just put a lot of work into that wall so the idea for a mural came up.”

Collard developed her art while living in the Swan River Valley. This is the third mural she has painted this summer in Winnipeg and the 14th mural that she has painted in the city, she said.

She was approached to paint The Nook mural by Take Pride Winnipeg.

“When I designed the mural, I wanted to make it a historical mural and tell the story of the Nook’s history — not only their 25-year-old history but the history of what it used to look like with previous owners and what the buildings around it looked like,” Collard said from her home in Scarborough, Ont.

Before the Parasidis family took ownership of the building in 1986, it was a Salisbury House and before that, it was known as the Queen’s Tea Room. All of the former tenants were incorporated into the mural.

Collard gathered photos and had conversations with the owners of the building to keep the mural as historically accurate as possible.

“Misercordia Health Centre (as it looked in 1937) is in the top right hand corner,” Collard said. “The former owners, the Alba brothers, are on the left hand side.

“Athina’s deceased father is in the long trench coat and several patrons are gathered at the bus stop or around the building. The Parasidis family is seen in the window playing cards, a graphically designed T-shirt is repainted on the wall as a mural inside a mural and the store is painted the same way as it was in the 1950s.”

The mural, which was completed on Sept. 16, took Collard two weeks to paint. She particularly liked painting the mural because of the large size, the possibility for incorporating detail due to the wall’s texture, and the subject.

“Discovering history and recreating the way it was is fun for me,” Collard said. “It makes the wall more interesting and bases it in fact, yet still allows for creativity. The old with new I suppose.”

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