One of Kaslo’s most striking and beloved artworks is the Maypole Mural, on the west wall of Kaslo Community Pharmacy on 4th Street. We are very fortunate that three of the mural’s creators have just supplied us with a treasure trove of information and photos re. how the mural came about.
The year was 2003. Ursula Ringwald, then on the board of the Kaslo Area Youth Centre (KAYC), learned of a Columbia Basin Trust grant aimed at encouraging young and elderly people to work together using art as a bridge. Ursula’s daughter, Miriam, writes: “That was the key piece to this whole thing… We, the youth, got together and interviewed a selection of seniors in Kaslo, asking them stories about growing up in Kaslo, etc. That is how the idea of the maypole came to be the main focus of the mural as many of them had danced in the May Days celebration themselves. We took the stories and with them my brother Arin put together the design.” (Note: for more on the importance of maypoles in Kaslo’s history, watch for our blog of September 21, 2016 on this site.)
Arin Ringwald, who had already decided to pursue a career in the arts, adds: “After securing $10,000 funding, we used a large portion of the money to hire two budding professional muralists to lead the way and get some mentoring out of it: Steven Skolka and Tyler Toews, who still operate Canadian Murals (www.canadianmurals.com). I created the design and rounded up a few volunteers for the production part of the work: my mom Ursula, my sister Miriam, her friend Carolyn Wood, and a Daniel Vetrov.”
Ursula adds other names to the list of painters: Phyllis Margolin (now passed away), Alexandra Dunnett, and Dana Bennett. (If you know of anyone else, readers, please let us know.)
Miriam continues: “Once Arin, with Steven and Tyler, had put together the design, we let the artists do the detail work and the rest of us helped by painting by numbers, so we didn’t mess anything important up.”
Arin Ringwald has since gone on to become a professional designer, and you can find his work at www.aringwald.com. We’ll let him conclude our story: “Everyone involved or around during the creation of that mural seems to continually be amazed it never got vandalized. That it made it this long is I think beyond anything I expected… Over the years I’ve had a lot of positive comments about how it brightened up and added to that little corner of Kaslo. Personally I’ve always been slightly ashamed of it because I’m just hard on myself as an artist and there’s a ton of things in it that are quite rough in regards to how I’d like them to have come out. And so in a weird round-about way, it’s helped me to appreciate not being so hard on myself; when people mention it, they seem to genuinely appreciate it, and that lets me relax and accept that even though I don’t achieve the level of perfection I desire, I can still make a positive impact. It’s a good lesson that I use as a reminder to this day.”
public art etc, Kaslo 