Art gallery in a parkade: New apartment complex features handcrafted murals
An apartment building in south Edmonton will have a unique attraction in its underground parking garage.
The new 358-rental unit Louvre at Century Park building features an art gallery on its parkade pillars.
Forty-four local artists got the opportunity to paint support columns within the parking garage and compete for five cash prizes. The winner of the top prize will take home $5,000.
Artists were asked to create images inspired by Paris or items held in the Louvre Museum’s collection to match the residential building’s name.
Painters came in every Saturday for the past five weeks to bring their creations to life.
“We’ve had a really great response,” said George Schluessel, CEO of ProCura Real Estate Services. “We really wanted to create the theme of the Louvre.”
For Schluessel, parkades are often simply a transit point.
“When we were developing this building, the parkade with high ceilings and a skylight, it just lent itself to a great opportunity to involve art into the project,” Schluessel said.
One of the artists, Peter Gegolick, told CTV News Edmonton that the project has been a rewarding experience, as he got to meet and learn from other artists as they created their work.
“Painting in a parkade isn’t the first place you would think of doing artwork, but I love art doing competitions and meeting other artists,” Gegolick said. “It’s really crazy almost seeing almost all the finished pieces at this point.
“I think it was a cool and fun concept to take things that are in the Louvre that are very much structured and have been around for centuries and really put this cool spin on it,” he added.
Grace Beaudin, another artist competing for the prize, said the paintings have brought a new life and character to an otherwise drab or cookie-cutter part of an apartment building.
“It just makes everything so much more alive,” she said. “There’s so many different styles of art and techniques, it’s beautiful.
“There’s some absolutely stunning pieces of work in here,” Beaudin added.
The prize winners will be announced on Nov. 27. Online voting runs from Monday to Friday at 5 p.m.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
![](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.7034404.1726088503!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_800/image.jpg)
'Buy nothing': PSAC wants federal workers to boycott downtown Ottawa businesses
A union representing federal employees is asking its members to bring their own lunch to work, in an apparent retaliation against downtown Ottawa businesses as new return-to-office protocols begin.
Actions speak louder: What experts are saying about the body language in the U.S. presidential debate
The highly anticipated debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a heated matchup. Here's what experts who analyzed the exchange had to say.
Jon Bon Jovi helps talk woman down from ledge on Nashville bridge
Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jon Bon Jovi and a video production assistant persuaded a woman standing on the ledge of a pedestrian bridge in Nashville to come back over the railing to safety.
Inside a Manitoba ghost town, a group of ladies works to keep it alive
Abandoned homes line the streets of Lauder, a town that's now a ghost of what it once was. Yet inside, a small community is thriving.
B.C. family says razor blades found in bag of frozen blueberries
The B.C. parents of an 11-year-old girl said their daughter recently found a package containing razor blades in a bag of Kirkland-brand frozen blueberries.
Langenburg UFO sighting commemorated with silver coin
Perhaps Saskatchewan's most famous encounter with Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP/UFO) – "The Langenburg Event" is now being immortalized in the form of a collective coin.
Taylor Swift wins at MTV Video Music Awards and Chappell Roan gets medieval
Taylor Swift and Post Malone took home the first award at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, for best collaboration, handed to them by Flavor Flav and Olympian Jordan Chiles.
Man, 70, and woman, 71, found shot dead in Montreal apartment, police
Montreal police (SPVM) are investigating after a man, 70, and woman, 71, were killed by gunshot wounds in an apartment.
Tens of thousands in the dark after Hurricane Francine strikes Louisiana with 100 m.p.h. winds
Hurricane Francine struck Louisiana on Wednesday evening as a Category 2 storm that forecasters warned could bring deadly storm surge, widespread flooding and destructive winds on the northern U.S. Gulf Coast.