Downtown Nanaimo has been spruced up thanks to two local artists’ hard work capturing the city’s diverse nature surrounding literacy and music.
A mural conceived four years ago and was funded by a $7,000 grant through the Canada Healthy Communities Initiative was unveiled Friday.
Lauren Semple says establishing the final design was difficult, but the finished product reflects everything the library offers.
“The process went on for about a year,” she says. “We went through four different designs before we decided on the bookshelf style.
“We had to incorporate the idea of 13 books, but with limited space we narrowed it down to [a] genres idea to bring it all together.”
Librarians were tasked with choosing the genres for the mural which included romance, sci-fi, history, food and cooking along with many others.
Lys Glassford says once the genres were selected it was up to them to interpret how to reflect the image to the city.
“We reached out to the stakeholders to find out what they wanted to see,” Glassford says. “Then we took that info to the administration and got their input before Semple and I brainstormed ideas for the mural.”
The mural took 120 hours from start to finish.
