Discover Saint John Director Victoria Clarke watches as the aluminum canvas gets installed on Market Slip.
An atypical canvas for an atypical artist was installed on the side of Market Slip Wednesday.
Sean Yoro will be returning to Saint John next week to paint another mural using the Fundy tides as his scaffolding.
Yoro’s work is known around the world. He’s painted murals for North Face, Facebook, Cannes Film Festival, and more, but the piece he gets asked about the most is from his time on the Bay of Fundy.
Discover Saint John Director Victoria Clarke says Yoro painted a “vanishing mural” on Pugsley Slip in 2017, which won a number of awards. His biggest regret was not leaving a legacy.
“The only way to have a legacy is to paint something that comes out of the water. We talked about what his big dream would be for that and he said if we could build a canvas, so we designed this. I’m going to tell you, no one has done this before, just like no one had done it in 2017,” she said.
His “canvas,” a 28 by 40 ft aluminum sheet, was specially built with the help of Fundy Engineering, and with plenty of discussions with Yoro.
“We need to create a surface that not only works for Sean as far as being a conduit for which his paint will be on and stay on, but also a canvas that is safe for him to paint on,” said Clarke.
Installation of a 40ft by 30ft aluminum “canvas” took place at market slip this morning. The sheet will be used by artist Sean Yoro as he paints a mural using the Fundy Tides as scaffolding. The canvas will be fully submerged, then removed and hung somewhere in the city! pic.twitter.com/VZRjjQDtWM
— Danielle McCreadie (@danimccreadie) July 24, 2019
Each day, the tides will rise and fall, covering and uncovering the sheet as Yoro works.
Clarke says he’ll be creating a one-of-a-kind mural that will then be removed and displayed somewhere in the city.
“28 feet is significant because that’s the size of our tides here in the Fundy Bay. He’s going to arrive to paint between July 28th, he’ll paint til the 8th, and we’ll be pulling it out shortly thereafter. How that looks afterwards? Well, this is all new,” she said.
All oil paints and mediums used for each project are completely non-toxic, made with alkali-refined linseed oil or safflower oil and natural pigments, something Clarke says is important to Yoro.
“What’s really interesting is he would also consider himself a water warrior, protector of the environment, and so he wouldn’t use any paints that would do anything negative to the water or any sea life,” she said.
Funding for the project comes from Discover Saint John, ACOA, and the province.
You will be able to see Yoro, his twin brother Gabe and their friend Payton Purdy working on Market Slip from July 28th to August 8th.
A video of Yoro’s 2017 mural can be found online.
