Sudbury's Up Here festival to retire old murals with new art

For its eighth year, the Up Here festival in Sudbury, Ont. is retiring some old murals to make room for new artists.

Each year the festival brings mural artists to the city – along with up-and-coming musicians – to leave their mark on downtown Sudbury.

Festival co-founder Christian Pelletier said some artists will paint over older murals, such as one at the city's YMCA dating back to 2015.

"What we've seen with other mural festivals across the country is that they retire them a lot quicker," Pelletier said.

"You know, if I look at the mural festival in Montreal, like they're repainting over the same wall year after year and like I'm like, 'Oh no, I don't want to do that.'"

"Public art is ephemeral. It's meant to change. It evolves over time," he added. "It's a dialogue with the community. And as people have different things to say and to dialogue about, I think it's important that the art reflects that."

In addition to repainting some older murals, Pelletier said there is a greater focus on Indigenous artists this year.

"I think that we're all taking a look inside a lot more and saying, 'Okay, what have we been doing? Where can we do better?'" he said.

"We've curated over 60 different pieces of public art in and around downtown Sudbury over the years. We've had some Indigenous artists, but the representation hasn't always been that great."

To increase that representation the festival brought in Indigenous artist Anong Migwans Beam as a guest curator. Migwans Beam is from M'Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island.

Two of the artists she chose are twin brothers Greg and Chris Mitchell, who are originally from Halifax, are Miꞌkmaq, and now live and work out of Toronto.

"They've done some work with the Toronto Raptors and with the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) and with a bunch of folks across the country," Pelletier said.

The Mitchell brothers are repainting an older mural at Sudbury's downtown YMCA with a design of a bear and moose inspired by the woodland art style of Indigenous artists like Norval Morisseau.

"I like it where you don't need to know the backstory," said Greg Mitchell.

"You don't need to know the references when you see it, you're just like, 'Well, that's cool. The colours are nice, the image is easy to digest."

Chris Mitchell said their Sudbury mural will be the biggest yet in their careers. The moose and bear, he said, are important in Miꞌkmaq culture, and should also play well in northern Ontario.

In addition to new murals around Sudbury's downtown, the festival will also feature musical artists from Canada and the U.S. starting on Friday, Aug. 19.

"One of the acts that I'm most excited about is a duo, husband and wife partnership, called Quintron and Miss Pussycat," Pelletier said.

"They're from New Orleans. And we saw them in Puerto Rico a few years ago at a festival there, and they just completely blew our minds."