I don’t spend a ton of time in my hometown of Calgary but I am lucky enough to be connected with some good like-minded friends who want to explore it when we are all here at the same time. I had posted some pictures on FB not long ago and a friend replied saying I had to check out BUMP YYC, you can visit their website here.
BUMP or the Beltline Urban Murals Project is an initiative by the Beltline Neighbourhoods Association to promote their communities. The beltline is an area in Calgary just south of our downtown core. It is an eclectic mix of old (well, Calgary “old”) and new, hip and retro, good and bad – food, drinks, shopping, condos and run-down apartment blocks. You name it the beltline probably has it.
Kim and I made a plan and opened the map that is provided on the BUMP website one day and headed out to explore the murals. I feel like we ended up seeing maybe 14% of all the beautiful art available. I see now that this is something that is going to take some time and multiple trips. But I will endeavor to get to all of them over the next few years. Below are the few that we visited on our first BUMP adventure.
These first four are behind the Camera Store in the alley between 11th Avenue and 10th Avenue. The sun was in a beautiful position when we were there and there was some amazing reflection of windows from the building across the alley.
These two are on the back of the Camera Store on 11th Avenue and 6th Steet. While your there you might as well pop in and buy a new lens – you know you want to, right?! This mural, by Mateusz Naperialski, is lovely. I loved the colours that Naperialski used, the lone wolf and the suggestion of the aspen forest that he rules.
Kim and I stood and explored this mural for ages. It is between 12th and 11th Avenue going down 9th Street. It took us a bit to find as we were approaching from the south. You need to turn around at the alley and look back toward 12th Avenue. This mural is by Cinta Videl of Barcelona, Spain. I’m going to say this was in the running for being one of my favourites!
Okay, this may be my favourite. The artist is DALeast and I was blown away by what came out of so many scrappy lines and colour mix.
I loved this big beautiful cat painted by Faith XLVII. Forteset Liber translates to Strong and Free.
Mural by Mary Haasdyk on a side alley off 17th Avenue just west of 8th Street. This is a beautiful brick building and I thought that the colour choices were perfect for this subject and canvas. There is a lot of warmth in this mural and it felt very South American to me.
I am not entirely sure about this one. I definitely like it more now than when I was walking around. This was at the end of our afternoon. I was tired and the cars seemed, at the time, to be in the way. BUT, this is inner-city mural art, right? Of course, there are going to be cars! The colour combination is great, the setting between the two building makes it very interesting as well. It reminds me of a bunch of people in a meeting, everyone talking, no one listening.
This is my last one. I am not even sure it is a part of the BUMP scene. But I liked it alot. It was around the corner and down the alley a bit from the Mary Haasdyk mural.
If you get a chance, download the map in the link in the introduction to this post and go out and explore the murals. I do love cities that support art, tourism and communities all in one fell swoop. I will post some images of a similar walk that BD and I took in Glasgow soon.
Those photos all turned out very well!
Thanks Kim! We really need to get out again. It may have to be LA or PS though.
The murals are fun. I was out with Sean one night, thinking fewer cars would make it easier to get full shots. Maybe not so much. I think all but the cat are new to me.
Keith, their map is really good, it shows the murals by year as well as location.