Larger pieces are also planned. The group is in the middle of choosing artists for murals on the old telephone office, which is now the Boissevain Dental Clinic, and the retired water towers. Heide said all submissions are in for both projects. There were 12 interested in the water tower work and eight for the dental office. They are currently down to three possibilities for the clinic and are expecting to do the same with the towers, with the Municipality of Boissevain-Morton involved in that decision.
“There were some really good looking submissions.”
The clinic mural came up because the new building owners, Dustin and Danielle Mansfield had been doing additions prior to opening and were interested in hosting a mural. The Arts Council received a grant for the Queen’s Jubilee for artwork, so it all worked well. As the building on South Railway Street was once the local telephone office and the Mansfield’s were interested in something historical, “communication” became the theme. To tie in with the Jubilee, the idea will be to show changes to communications over the past 75 years. The budget for this mural is about $5,000.
The water tower project is part of the revitalization grant the municipality recently received for the Downtown Boissevain Rejuvenation Project. Among other initiatives included under the $186,000 project was the idea of painting murals on the old water towers on Broadway. These were long since decorated with the “hot and cold” themes. Heide said there was always a desire on the part of their group to be involved in something like this.
“This is something we dreamed about since we revamped the council,” she explained. “When they got the grant they talked about the water tower, and we wanted to see what we could do.”
Initially, the budget for the work was about $40,000. Since that was sent in, inflation has been raging on everything, so it is a little up in the air. As Heide explained, the murals on the two towers comprise a large surface. As they are very high, there is a need to rent a lift, and danger pay is a part of the situation, unlike most murals.
Again, they have not chosen the artist yet, but they are looking to keep with the hot and cold theme. Heide said there were submissions where warm colours were used for the hot tower and cooler for the cold, or winter and summer.
“We know how important the hot and cold is to the town, how iconic those towers are, and we want to stick with that.”
There are challenges besides size and height. There is a fair bit of rust on the towers, and Heide said they cannot really repair that. Instead they would like to keep it from spreading, and some submissions have incorporated it into the art.
What they cannot have while working on this project is too much breeze.
“We pretty much need five calm days in a row. It sounds impossible. It feels calm down here, but if you get up there it can be windy.”
Once the decisions are made, they will work with the artists for both projects to see when they are available and the hope is the murals can be done as soon as possible. They obviously must be finished before freeze up, but if they can be completed by fall and the StreetFest event is held again, they can hold a celebration of them like the old signature days of a generation before.
There are other projects ongoing with the Arts Council. With help from the Boissevain-Morton Foundation, they are having the bricks on the Cook Street Arts Hall repointed, with Haight Masonry of Killarney working on that presently. Their art camps are going well. Also, they are holding an artisan market at the Goodon Wildlife Museum, selling the work of local artists. Heide said this is going very well, with plenty of interest from locals and visitors.
The mural project is a sort of follow up to these Roots Run Deep mural painted on Hazlewood Drugs in 2019. This time, they are doing all of the organizing themselves, which is a little more stressful. Murals will continue to appear in Boissevain, although they might be taking the place of older artworks in the future. Overall, everything is looking good with the Arts Council.
“There is so much going on with us now,” Heide stated.

by PAUL RAYNER, Recorder staff