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Youth Centre mural melds industry and nature

Three young artists are collaborating on a piece to be installed on the outside of the building.
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From left, Soleil Babcock, Bethany Pardoe, Coleman Webb and Abigail Cole. Photo: Bill Metcalfe

Three youth artists have been spending their weekends this summer on a scaffold set up in the Nelson Youth Centre. They’re composing and painting a huge mural that will eventually be installed on the front of the building.

Soleil Babcock, Bethany Pardoe and Abigail Cole have enthusiastically taken up the challenge of collaborative painting.

“It’s tricky at first when you are not used to working with other people with other artistic expressions,” Babcock says, “but once you start to talk about it and get used to each other’s styles, it gets easier to share how you want it to turn out.”

The piece is about nature and industry.

“We wanted to portray both the conflict and the harmony that we have in our world between industry and nature,” Cole says. “So when it is done we will have elements from each, intertwining with each other. When [the large figure that dominates the painting] is done she will have an industrial heart, but vines all around her bones and flowers growing from her.”

Artist and project co-ordinator Coleman Web says it’s his job to advise them and help them collaborate.

“It’s very enriching to your own artistic journey to work with other people,” he says. “You do things you would not normally do and build ideas in a different way. This piece has really blossomed because of this group. They all brought sketches and elements to the table and we melded them.”

Babcock, Pardoe and Cole seem unable to talk about their mural without smiling. They said they have a message for Nelson: “We want to do this everywhere. Hire us.”

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Soleil Babcock and Bethany Pardoe on top of the scaffold, Abigail Cole below. Photo: Bill Metcalfe
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Abigail Cole paints a human heart that is part flesh and part machine. Photo: Bill Metcalfe
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Soleil Babcock and Bethany Pardoe at work on their mural that will eventually be installed on the outside of the Nelson and District Youth Centre. Photo: Bill Metcalfe


Bill Metcalfe

About the Author: Bill Metcalfe

I have lived in Nelson since 1994 and worked as a reporter at the Nelson Star since 2015.
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