Dumpsters lined 6th Street in Fernie last weekend, drawing the attention of all who passed. Not due to their odour, but their beautiful new coat of paint.
Eight artists and the community itself applied their skills to dumpsters donated to the vibrant second annual Dumpster Art Project.
Organizer Courtney Baker first envisioned the event a few years ago and was encouraged by Mayor Mary Giuliano to move forward with it.
“It’s really great having the city’s support on something like this and it’s a way that people who might not normally get involved with public art to get involved,” said Baker.
She added, “It’s great because groups can do it, too, as well as people of any age and artistic ability ... It takes something normally not lovely like a dumpster into something accessible and beautiful.”
Artists ranged from the current such as Aidan Lindsay whose works were on display at Inside Out Fernie Wellness last month, longtime muralists like Troy Cook, and relative artistic upcomers like Scott Cable and Sasha Potter.
Lindsay’s dumpster was transformed by her theme of imagination and featured two children looking into their cloudy subconscious of possibilities on her dumpster’s front.
“It’s a good different and it’s a really fun challenge working on a dumpster versus a normal canvas. Your perspective needs to be so different,” said Lindsay.
Cook and his niece Lania Cook took to their dumpster with a plethora of pink, multiplying designs of pink bunnies and rockets on their metal canvas.
“I haven’t done civic art in awhile so I just wanted to take part in something like this.”
For his design, Cook said he just wanted to paint things he liked.
Others employed a more spiritual artistic approach, like Cable, a growing artist over the last two years.
“I really wanted to show my work more as an artist and get my work out there, this seemed like a really great opportunity,” he said.
Cable and Potter’s work included a galactic, starry sky, and a meditating figure.
Between the two of them, well over 20 hours of painting had been put into their dumpster.