Celebrating the little wins

Last year I won my first award as an artist : The I HeART Main St Awards [Innovative Award] alongside another artist (Mahmood Hosseini) for the Mississauga's Clarkson Village. It felts surreal when I got the phone message announcing that I was one of the winners. And it was a much welcomed surprise, all thanks to STEPS who arranged the connection between artists and businesses to create public artwork.  

In this case, my assignment was to paint removable pollinator panels. The city has these large planter boxes where they plant flowers to allow for bees to pollinate. Bees are a crucial participant in the balance of nature for many reasons, and it's great that more people are recognizing it and doing something about it.  I proposed a colourful but simple design inspired by the colourful flowers bees get to interact with. I was really happy with the results because I created all my colours from the 3 primary colours (yellow, cyan and magenta) and white. It took a little longer since I had to mix the paint on-site, but there's something really satisfying about being able to create your own colours. That in itself was rewarding too. 

It took me two full days to paint the panels. I brought my little sidekick Newton on Day 2. I didn't want to leave him home alone for that long two days in a row.  He also enjoyed the day and made sure I took breaks too :) 

If you'd like to see what the finished product looks like in the wild, I saved a screen recording of it from Google Map below. Pretty cool :) 

Now back to work! lol.