The City of Barrie is taking a new approach when it comes to dealing with vandalism and it's hoping that a “respect for art” will beautify the city, while preventing property from being defaced at the same time.
The electrical box that artist Renee Sukie is working on has been spray painted several times. The hope now is vandals will steer clear.
“There is an unspoken rule among artists that you don't tag somebody else's artwork. It's just a sign of respect, you don't disrespect other people's art work,” she says.
Sukie says the city spends a lot of money cleaning graffiti and that it makes sense to put something that won’t get tagged and looks nice.
It’s art that benefits the community, and beautifies the downtown. On one side of the box a vibrant entertainment scene and the other, a step back in time.
This piece is a partnership between the City of Barrie and Bell. The latter has a mural program in Toronto, where hundreds of electrical boxes have been decorated. Barrie is hoping to do something similar.
“We have quite a few murals throughout the city and we've had a huge success with them,” says Alan Greenlees, of the City of Barrie. “They haven't been tagging the murals.”
There's a mural on a city building at Johnson's Beach in the east end and at Queen's Park in the downtown....
“There's so many artists downtown too, so there's a lot of representatives of different artists, music drama, fine arts. I love it,” Sukie says.
