INNISFAIL — Karen Scarlett and Ryan Jason Allen Willert are former Innisfailians who became accomplished big city artists, but they are coming home to add life, passion and beauty to the community.
Recruited by the Innisfail Welcoming & Inclusive Community Committee (WICC), the pair are the lead artists in a growing campaign to beautify the town.
They are both preparing major local mural projects this summer, including Willert’s 14.3-metre (47-foot) by 5.2-metre (17-foot) creation on the south wall of The Coffee Cottage.
“This will be our second mural. Willert is honoured to be part of this project,” said WICC member Jason Heistad, who is also on the group’s mural subcommittee.
He noted the first public art project will soon be underway at the Innisfail Schools Campus with the 12.2-metre-long (40-foot) mural of hearts, which will be created by students with more than 1,200 hearts. Both projects are being funded through grants.
“Karen really wants to give back to the community she grew up in and she really wants to help us build the murals this summer,” said Heistad. “But also, to build on that theme of beautifying Innisfail.”
Scarlett’s family roots in Innisfail go back to the 1880s. Her great-grandfather Jim Scarlett arrived in 1881.
Her great-grandmother Estella Wildman Scarlett christened the new town with its current name of Innisfail, replacing the first pioneer moniker of Poplar Grove.
“She literally named Innisfail. She was Irish. Innisfail is the name of a space or an area in Ireland, and it means a beautiful valley, beautiful place,” said Scarlett, whose mother Barb (Scarlett) Chatenay and oldest sister Bev Carson still reside in town.
“There was always art around,” she said, noting her grandparents were artists, a home schooling that led to a successful art career in Calgary, including at least 30 mural projects, nine of which were done last summer.
“I’ve taken a few little classes here and there, but for the most part I took lessons at grandma’s table.”
She’s hoping to have a few choices in town to create her public art, including an ambitious project proposal that honours military veterans as well as another for a private business designed to welcome everyone who comes to town.
“The conversation I’ve had with town councillors is that it’s more than just painting a wall. It’s more about creating excitement within the community,” said Scarlett, who wants to start painting locally in June. She also aspires to host workshops for youth eager to paint murals.
“When I paint a mural here, I want to include businesses. I want to include youth. I want to have the town feel like they can come out and either participate or feel like they have been part of the process,” said Scarlett.
“Then, the town more readily gets excited and wants to take care of the space and they want to see more murals—not only to enliven a space, but murals make things safer when things are more beautiful and taken care of.”
Throughout his art career, Willert has been commissioned to do dozens of Indigenous-themed murals in Calgary and Red Deer.
“I am really excited because Innisfail is my home town and I am able to bring my lineage and to represent where I grew up,” said Willert, a proud First Nations citizen from the Blackfoot Nation who now resides in Red Deer.
Willert’s mural at The Coffee Cottage will feature a running pronghorn antelope, complete with indigenous symbolism.
It will honour his 12-year-old stepson, whose Blackfoot Indigenous name is Running Antelope.
“I am going to do a dedication to my stepson on here because in Red Deer I did a magpie as my other stepson’s indigenous name is Magpie,” he said, noting one of his more successful pieces of public art was a “massive” magpie in downtown Red Deer.
“And now that I am in Innisfail, my hometown, I am going to do a dedication to my stepson,” he said.
“They are white,” added Willert of his two beloved stepsons. “I thought, what a great thing to do to put up my stepson’s Indigenous name on a wall. I grew up in a white town being a Blackfoot, and I just thought that whole concept was phenomenal.”
He plans to start his mural in June, and hopes to have completed the project in the same month.
“I think people in the community are excited about it. I think people see public artwork bringing a sense of community together, especially when you are working with local artists,” said WICC and subcommittee member Dale Dunham, who is a co-owner of The Coffee Cottage.
“We are not bringing in artists from other cities, provinces or other countries. We are actually trying to use local talent, and for that to reflect our community,” Dunham said.
“They are sons and daughters of Innisfail.”
