There’s just something about the wintertime.
For local artist Jane Degenhardt — who treks through the woods in the autumn and winter months, photographing the natural world at close range to find inspiration for her paintings — it’s about decay’s place in the cycle of life.
“I find that moment in time really compelling, where the life cycle is most visually evident,” Degenhardt explained. “Especially here in the Northwest. As soon as things are dying, the moss is coming to life, and that combination to me is fascinating. A lot of my paintings involve that state. The whole life cycle is really evident.”
The expression of Degenhardt’s larger-than-life fascination with nature can be found in her latest piece, “Bramble,” a close-up of a blackberry bush reconfigured into a 30-by-10-foot mural.
The mural is located on the southern wall of a parking structure on the corner of Main and 12th streets in downtown Vancouver. The new art installation also includes painted crosswalks, pavement murals and decoratively carved bike racks. Installed in early December, the mural marked the final component of the beautification project at the intersection.
To create the piece, Degenhardt had to reimagine her original version of the work, which was done in acrylics on a 2-foot-square board. With the help of Photoshop — and a partner skilled in graphic design — she was able to adjust the dimensions of the painting.
The trick was “to go through the whole reproduction process and try to get an accurate depiction of the colors and textures,” she said. “Sometimes, it’s hard to retain the integrity of the original painting.”
They printed the new version of the painting on several 5-by-10-foot sheets of plastic and adhered those sheets to metal, and then a crew from Salmon Creek’s International Graphics & Nameplates Inc., installed the metal plates to the side of the parking garage.
The result is a striking vertical mural in electric shades of purple, green and blue.
“When it finally went up, and we stood back and looked, we realized it really worked so well with the details of the building across the street, and the Magenta Theater. It just felt like it belonged there,” Degenhardt said.
The metal plates will also last longer than a traditional paint-on-concrete mural, according to Michael Walker, executive director of Vancouver’s Downtown Association.
“The colors and the image, it’s super vibrant; it’s almost like looking at a TV screen or something,” Walker said. “I’m really happy with it. It’s quite remarkable.”
As with so many other projects in 2020, this wasn’t the original plan. The 12th and Main installation was supposed to be wrapped up in July, but when COVID-19 hit, the original artist that Vancouver’s Downtown Association had commissioned to paint the parking garage wall wasn’t able to travel to Vancouver. When wildfires ravaged the Pacific Northwest in September, it had to pivot yet again.
Vancouver’s Downtown Association was on the clock to find a replacement. The project was one of the first in the city to rely on funds from the grant program operated by Vancouver’s new Arts, Culture and Heritage Commission, and those grant funds would expire at the end of 2020.
“It was really a matter of weeks,” Degenhardt said of the time they had to bring the project to fruition.
Walker said he’s pleased they were able to pivot in time, and even more so that the group landed on a local artist. It strengthens the sense of place, he added.
“I’m just super proud to pull this together, given the circumstances with COVID and the forest fires,” Walker said. “It’s been such a vibrant, bright spot in downtown. With COVID and the environment, we need all the joy we can get right now.”
New arts funding
The grant from the Arts, Culture and Heritage Commission covered around 40 percent of the total cost of the 12th and Main installation, Walker said.
In late 2019, Vancouver’s Downtown Association was among the 13 community groups to receive funds in the commission’s first round of grant awards. It received $10,000 for the bike rack element and another $10,000 for the rest of the art park.
The commission had awarded a total of $122,255 for festivals, exhibits, performances and art installations around the city. Some of the projects, however, had to be postponed in order to adhere to social distancing restrictions — impossible to conceive in a pre-pandemic world.
Though Vancouver’s public arts program is new, it’s not unprecedented. The city had previously enjoyed a thriving publicly supported arts scene starting in 1994. The then-Cultural Commission had fizzled in 2005 due to lack of funding.
Last year, the city council decided to revive its public arts scene and appointed nine people to a new commission. The group operates with an annual budget of $400,000.
