INNISFAIL – During the last weekend of June, organizers of the ambitious heart mural in front of the Innisfail Schools Campus were thrown for a huge loop.
Their kid was missing. Someone has taken the child-sized silhouette art piece from their mural in progress on the chain link fence along 52nd Avenue.
Notices were immediately sent out on social media about the missing silhouette kid.
“We just wanted it back. People make mistakes and do dumb things, and we just wanted it back,” said Tasha Busch, a co-organizer for the project.
The next morning the nameless silhouette kid was back. Someone, anonymously and possibly shamed, had the piece returned.
Project organizers were smiling again. The great heart mural project was back on track.
Busch is a member of the Innisfail Welcoming and Inclusive Communities Committee (IWICC) and its mural sub-committee, and a co-organizer of the mural project that has been planned by IWICC and school officials since last February.
Busch handled logistics while her co-organizer Heidi Nelson, an art teacher at École John Wilson Elementary School, was the creative director.
Together they either organized or helped up to 1,000 young students from the four schools at Innisfail Schools Campus to play an essential role.
“Yes, we had rains, the silhouette was stolen and we had a back order of paint. But it all worked out, and it’s beautiful,” said Nelson.
After securing a $2,500 Community Grant from the town, the mural team started work in mid-May to have 1,200 hearts sized and cut from plywood.
Innisfail Schools Campus students then began in June with the painting, priming and lacquering of the hearts.
“It's taken a while. But we have a great volunteer base. A lot of the high school kids came in and did a shout out to the community through our personal Facebook pages,” said Busch, adding the actual installation on the chain link fence did not begin until about three weeks ago, a delay largely caused by the recent inclement weather.
Joy Milne teaches options at Innisfail High School and seized the opportunity for her school to be part of the mural project as it would be a fit for leadership students, a volunteer group with a mandate to be involved in the community.
“A lot of things have shut down since COVID, and we just wanted to get some spirit back into the school,” said Milne, who is also the school’s inclusive education coordinator. “We don’t often get to do things as a campus and I knew this would bring us together and the leadership kids were all over it.”
As for the mural’s size, it was initially expected to measure about five feet tall and 40-ft.-long but it ended up nearly three times as long at 112 feet.
The design has the hearts leaving the hand of the child-sized silhouette. The hearts cover the fence in rows of rainbow colours of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple for about 15 metres and then slowly fade out.
“It’s a silhouette blowing out the hearts to the community,” said Busch. “It starts really strong there and the love just kind of flows out, and then it starts to peter out because it's love sending out to the community.”
She said the messaging to the community is hope for everyone to appreciate art, noting it can be seen and interpreted in many different ways.
“A child could see the heart that they painted and love it every day. A resident in Innisfail can just walk past a lifeless fence and now it's beautiful. There's colour, and it's vibrant, and it makes people smile,” said Busch, hoping it will inspire other Innisfailians to create more public art. “We just want people to see it and spark a little bit of joy and creativity. And if they have an idea, let's try to make it happen.”
In the meantime, Nelson is excited for the kids that they will see all their hard work on display in front of the campus.
“They've loved seeing the progress. And every day I've had people say, ‘we love to fence. We love how it's coming together,” said Nelson. “The kids are so excited to see their hard work pay off.”
