Victoria is installing 400 summer banners in the downtown core and James Bay that will feature five new designs from Kwakwaka’wakw artist Lou-ann Neel.
It’s all part of a city summer beautification program that has been running since 1970.
The first of the banners, some of which are nearly eight feet tall, went up Tuesday. “Watching it being unfolded and installed was absolutely amazing,” Neel said.
Neel said her design was inspired by the #TheTellMeChallenge, a social media trend that asked people to depict things without actually mentioning them.
“I love the way these social media posts unfold in such a fun way with humour and imagination,” Neel said in her artist statement.
“To me, Victoria has always been the city of gardens,” she said. “I decided to draw from this idea by looking further into the beautiful gardens to see what helps keep them alive and vibrant.”
The result was five designs inspired by the birds and bees — plus other insects that help gardens thrive.
The bumblebee and the butterfly are traditional family crests of the Kwakwaka’wakw. The hummingbird also features prominently in Kwakwaka’wakw storytelling traditions, Neel said. But the designs also feature dragonflies and ladybugs, two pest-eating insects that are a boon to gardens.
“[They’re] not a crest, but it’s definitely recognized as part of our daily life,” she said.
The bold colouring on black was a design choice made after consultation with Artopia Adaptive Display, which printed the banners. It was important to create a design that would withstand the weather, Neel said.
Neel’s designs, for which she received an artist fee of $2,000, will be on display for the summers of 2023 and 2024. Banner installation will continue into next week.
Neel, a Victoria-based artist, has artists in her family lineage on both sides and has worked with jewelry, textiles, as well as paintings and prints for more than four decades.
She went back to school at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design at the age of 40 for digital design, a skill that came in handy for this project, her largest work of public art yet.
“I’m very satisfied,” Neel said. “You can see them from a block away and still recognize what the shapes are. And the colours, of course, just pop them right out.”
Every two years, the City of Victoria puts up new banner designs by an artist from the capital region, after a competitive selection process.
“They weren’t looking for the typical iconic things when you think about Victoria, like double-decker buses or flower baskets — you know, the things that are already there,” Neel said of the selection criteria. “They wanted something different.”
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