Mural on Broadway Ave symbolizes new adventures
June 19, 2020, 4:19 am
Kara Kinna
A new mural was unveiled on Broadway Avenue in Moosomin on Saturday, June 6 on the side of the Cork and Bone restaurant.
Painted by Moosomin’s Jhade Acuna, a McNaughton High School student who graduated Grade 12 this spring, the piece was commissioned by Cork and Bone owner Jarrod Slugoski.
“When I started that wall, I really thought it needed something on it, so I went to the high school and I talked to Sherrie (Meredith) who I found out used to be the art teacher before she was the vice principal, and I asked if any of her students would be interested doing what they had done around the school with the murals around the school,” he says.
“So she asked and Jhade approached me and said that she would like to do it, and I gave very broad strokes of what I was looking for, which was something to do with community and with how we (Jarrod and his son Oliver) moved back (to Moosomin). We had a quick little rough draft talk and then she worked on it throughout the year, and then Covid-19 came and we didn’t really talk about it. Then I asked Sherrie where it was at, and she said ‘actually it is done and it’s been sitting here, but we didn’t know what to do with it,’ so then I said ‘okay let’s move forward on it.’ ”
The mural was mounted on June 6, and Jhade was there, along with her family, to see the final product after it went up.
“I thought it was a big challenge, a new challenge for me, because I always just paint on my own sketch pad or my own canvas, but when I heard about this I thought ‘my canvass is going to be really, really big,” says Jhade. “At first I was really hesitant if I was going to do it. I was scared. I thought this is a really big responsibility, but then I knew if I don’t do it I’m going to regret it.”
Jhade says the mural signifies moving on to new things and new adventures in life. She says she can relate to the experience as her family moved to Canada from the Philippines when she was a child.
“The message is to keep waiting for those turning points in your life,” she says. “For me, back when I was in the Philippines when I was in elementary school, I was just there clueless (as to what would come next), and I didn’t know I was going to come here, and it was a big turning point in my life. So I think everyone should wait for their turning points in there life and to see what is waiting for them there.”
Jhade says the hot air balloon on the mural symbolizes “the adventures of your life that you are going to see as you live.”
There is an active visual arts class at McNaughton High School, and Jhade was one of the students.
“I watched the seniors paint murals, and that included my sister, because she also painted a mural for the school. So I thought that is really cool, and so I kind of followed her footsteps and I took visual arts class in Grade 10 with Mrs. Meredith.”
Jhade says the mural was a work in progress, and it feels strange to no longer be working on it.
“It feels weird. When I was working on it I was so busy with it, and then when I finished it I just felt really empty, like I don’t have anything left to do now, I don’t have anything left to learn and worry about now.”
She says after taking on such a big project, she says she’d be more confident taking on a project like that again.
“Painting is like an adventure too because when you do it there are a lot of challenges as you go through it. And then I had people beside me like Mrs. Meredith who I would just always call from her office and say ‘I don’t know what to do with this,’ and asked if she could give me direction, and she was always like ‘okay, let’s do this!’ ”
