In this Manitoba beach town, preserving the seawall art gallery is an eternal struggle

"Holy mackerel," Merryl-Lee Mercier exclaims. "What will it look like this year?"

Mercier is the chairperson of the Seawall Gallery in Gimli, Man. She's recounting for me her annual ritual. Every spring, she "walks the wall" — a concrete pier that extends around the town's harbour — to see how each of its 70 murals have survived the winter. Without fail, the paintings are damaged by ice, wind and sub-zero temperatures. Mercier volunteers to organize restoration efforts, a task which, let's be honest, does not seem entirely sane.

Summer months ravage the murals, too. Direct sunlight breaks down pigment, and they're regularly slammed by waves and exfoliated by sand. Entire layers of paint were blasted away by a storm in 2015. Crazy winds barrelled across Lake Winnipeg, causing waves to crash far over the pier. A reporter for the region's Express Weekly once called the ongoing volunteer efforts of the Seawall Committee "Sisyphean." 

This particular Sisyphus has endured the task for 28 years, so far. In 1997, members of the Gimli Art Club were granted permission to paint scenes of local history on the drab concrete wall. Many of those original muralists have since died, and while some of their painted scenes have chipped and faded into oblivion, others have been doggedly restored — though not without controversy.

"If your proposed painting gets accepted by the committee," explains Mercier, "you must agree to three things: one, your painting belongs to the Gimli Art Club; two, you will maintain it; three, or someone else will."

"Sometimes, it's like pulling teeth to find willing people that'll help restore them," says Millard Barteaux. At 86 years of age, Bart, as he's known, maintains his own three originals. One — a waterbomber flying low over the lake — is a personal favourite of mine. Something about that particular yellow against that particular blue reminds me of the best parts of childhood. Besides his own work, he restores three or four others each year. 

"Between my drinking and my gambling, I find the time," he jokes. 

"His golf is the real problem!" says Mercier, adding that it's usually retirees like Bart who help the most. Mercier is refreshingly honest. "When I put my first two paintings on the wall, it was a work of love. But having to restore them so often over the years — well, it's not love anymore!" 

When a mural languishes too long and a restorer cannot be found, it gets painted over. This is yet another way the content of the gallery changes. Decades-old, weather-beaten murals sit between freshly restored and brand-new scenes.

Gimli, population 6,500, was settled by Icelandic immigrants in 1875. It's still the largest Icelandic community outside of Iceland. The paintings are populated by Viking warriors, fishermen, farmers and homesteaders. They depict scenes of Cree and Anishinaabe life, too. According to historians, the early success of New Iceland (as the settlement was known) was largely due to help from local First Nations.

Gimli's population swells during the summer, when seasonal cottage renters and beach-going day-trippers descend upon the town. My own yearly ritual involved getting ice cream at Country Boy, Gimli's charming greasy-spoon diner, and strolling the seawall with my young family. To my kids, the murals were like the magical sidewalk drawings in Mary Poppins. They'd spend time choosing which one they'd jump into, if they could. 

But to me, the seawall paintings are magical in a different way. When the conditions are just right — and the diffused sun of an overcast sky becomes like the specialized lighting of a gallery — the paintings perform a slight-of-hand magic show just for me. Suddenly, their unfettered creativity reveals itself, peeking out from their parochial charm and rural subject matter. Clouds look like funny little nimbuses. Horizon lines are oddly low. People and animals have the same girth and wit. The painted worlds teem with vitality. Lighting is everything. But so is context.

I love the Seawall Gallery because it gently repudiates what I think I know about art. The claims made by big-city art feel so grandiose. In art world parlance, contemporary painting is said to interrogate art history; to destabilize heteronormativity; to problematize this, that or the other thing. So many heavy verbs! But on the seawall last summer, I saw a little red horse in a blue field, knee-deep in wildflowers, painted with obvious impressionistic joy. None of those formidable verbs in sight. I love that sturdy red horse and her foal. I love the murky indigos, too. The original artist, Olive (Ollie) Margaret Stranger, died in 2018. The painting has since been restored by Alec Baldwin (no, not that one). 

I'm certainly not the only artist-tourist to feel this way. Painter Patrick Dunford recently described his own experience of the seawall for me. "In 2009, when I was painting abstracts in my MFA, I was really unsatisfied with them," he says. "But when I visited Gimli, I was so impressed by many of the murals. They seemed more relevant and more 'in the world' than my interior brain abstracts. The rough surfaces and faded colours really influenced me. There was a certain unassuming quality to them, like the places they depict."

Baldwin is a Gimli celebrity, if not a Hollywood one. His own painting on the wall, Gimli Dog Party, is a fantastical interpretation of a real-life event he coordinates every summer, where local dogs gather for games and races. In the painting, dogs soar above the party on magic carpets — his way of depicting deceased canine friends. Baldwin, 35, is autistic. He's the youngest member of the Gimli Art Club. About the little red horse, he says, "she's protecting her foal from predators, and they are protecting each other from the wind." About restoring paintings on the seawall, he says, "I can work in all weather; in fish-fly season, in sun and rainbows season, in partly cloudy season. I don't get upset or have frustration. I stay inspired." 

Perhaps "restoring" is not the right word. Some artists can't resist adding their own flourishes to the original work, while others can't quite emulate the original artist's style. And, while much technical expertise has been gained by trial and error over the years, things sometimes go wrong. As Bart explains to me, "We've learned how to sand the murals down and how to fill in the peeling spots, but some of our experiments with glazes and sealants have us re-doing the whole thing over again."

"We research what we can do to keep the murals on the wall," says Mercier. "But one year, the sealant we tried changed the colours! It turned the buffalos green! It turned the skin on the Bathers grey — and anyone else with skin showing for that matter!" 

The "Bathers" Mercier is referring to is one of the earliest murals. Five 1920s era swimmers frolic in the water, sporting striped bathing costumes and caps. Mercier has been restoring it ever since the original painter, Madeleine Barg, passed away. "I do it because her husband comes and looks at it," she says. "But that one year I had to tell him, 'Sorry, the legs turned grey!' He was very gracious."

Not everyone is gracious with the committee's restorative efforts though. "Oh, people have gone up one side of me and down the other," Mercier says. "Some have even threatened to sue, and have told us we've ruined their parent's legacy. But we can only do what we're capable of doing."

Thankfully, Mercier not only has practical tenacity, but humour. If she can't quite get the right skin tone for The Bathers, she decides it's time for them to get a tan. But she's open to learning and regularly seeks advice. 

When speaking with Mercier, it struck me that the seawall restoration project interrogates notions of authorship. It destabilizes norms around social and durational art practices. It problematizes and resists the effects of climate, time and linear historical narratives. Bring on the verbs! Art talk is just spin, baby.

What is impossible to spin, however, is heart, and the Gimli Seawall Gallery has this in spades. The impact — deep and lasting — that the gallery has made on the community of Gimli, and on outsiders like me, is testament to this.

After 10 years on the job, Mercier is getting ready to pass the torch to Erika Hanneson, an excellent local artist with time and dedication for the cause, who'll doubtless have much work to do in advance of the Seawall's 30th anniversary, two summers from now. 

Struggle on, Sisyphus. Your effort is so appreciated.