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205 Fort Street
Location Map
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Location: NE corner Fort & St. Mary Ave; East Face
Occupant: Kellett Copy Centres
District: City Centre
Neighbourhood: South Portage
Artist(s): Mandy van Leeuwen
Year: 2000
Sponsors: Take Pride Winnipeg!, Downtown Winnipeg BIZ
Painters: David Glenewiakel, David Street, Mia van Leeuwen, Christoff Engbrecht, Jennifer Johnson
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Mandy van Leeuwen: "The theme of this one was to capture a bit of the history of North
American Lumber. It was the central place for people to get their lumber back then. I
worked on the townscape first". She wanted to acknowledge the other current tenants,
Kellett Copy Centre and Morrell's, so she put their names up on the other shops. " I got
some books out on the looks of the old building of the time, and was going for the small
town buildings look."
"Perspective wasn't my main focus either. I wanted it to be made up and raw. As you
walk up close to it there are a lot of layers and textures and colours in person. The whole
time I did this Mural, I knew that the hotel was going to go up right in front of it. So I
knew I had to put up as much detail as possible as it would be subject to closer scrutiny
by a lot of people."
This project required both a swing stage and scaffolding, and no projection was used, it
was rendered entirely freehand. "The entire Mural was a play with texture, and the idea
of having a tall structure and changing one of the buildings to a sky- a surreal point of
view. It was a lot of fun. It was also a lot more difficult having the fire escape to work
around, and to make a real one-of-a-kind sky was one of my focuses. I painted the sky
first and worked my way down using a stand up rocking chair (a swing- stage). Instead
of proper perspective I juxtaposed the townscape to create a look of my own."
"The trees are something I would call 'epic' in reference to telling a story or carrying
something on from my previous Murals in that form or look. And being Fall- I HATE
that season, so I thought I could learn to like Fall through this Mural. It worked! The
colour scheme I picked very carefully for the trees." Mandy has even received the
supreme compliment from several people that her treatment of the trees is reminiscent of
the Group of Seven. Others have told her that it reminds them of a Peter Breigel
painting. "I don't totally see it, but maybe it's the aerial point of view on things."
"The project was a lot of pressure though because it was such a large wall and my helpers
that were working with me weren't artistic painters, they did a lot of the filling in. I
started this one in September and it got pretty cold. I would have liked to have added a
lot more people activity here. It looks like a bit of a ghost town with just a few visitors.
When I did this one, Jennifer (Johnson, her artistic colleague) was away in Australia.
The next year I went back and added the man with the horse and the flatbed truck (photo 2)."
"In September when we started the Mural, a nesting pigeon laid two eggs in the window.
We found it really quite interesting to watch these birds grow, yup we fed them too! The
day the Mural was completed was the day we watched the young pigeons take their flight
off to where ever birds go."
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