Street art goes to the farm: Why a group of urban artists traded sidewalks for silos
In the Ontario countryside, eight artists are pushing their limits with a massive new canvas
Just outside of Ottawa there's a set of farms with tall silos, five of which are now painted with murals you wouldn't often find outside city limits. The Popsilos project brought eight artists to the country to decorate silos and create a sort of art tour for visitors to the area in celebration of Canada's 150th birthday, and it challenged those artists to push the boundaries of their comfort zones.
One of those artists is Roadsworth (a.k.a. Peter Gibson), a painter best known for his dizzying use of public streets. He often uses stencils to paint patterns, objects and, in some cases, portals that make the road a living space. For his silo at Horses by Hannah, the artist took the opportunity to focus on an environmental topic: the threat facing Canada's bee population.
In this video, you get to see the silo in process and learn about how being site-specific under an unusual and rural set of conditions helped Roadsworth to think about bees.
Pop Silos is open now. Roadsworth's mural is at Horses by Hannah at 8 County Road 3 in Casselman, Ont.
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