Alberta artist launches mural project in Innisfail with a little help from 100 friends

Artist Karen Scarlett is creating a public mural in Innisfail celebrating the Alberta town's grain farming history.

An Innisfail artist is creating a mural celebrating the town’s history as a grain hub.

The only catch with the 100 Friends Mural Project is that it’s a public art project that doesn’t qualify for public funding -- so artist Karen Scarlett is reaching out to 100 people to each donate $100 to help pay for the 60-foot mural.

“I tried to get some grant money through my personal practice and found out that you cant get art grants for community events unless you’re a society or non-profit or something,” said Scarlett, in an interview with CTV News.

“(Then) I saw some social media out of Red Deer and there’s a group of guys that they put in $40 four times a year and there’s 100 of them -- and they raise a whole bunch of money and do good stuff with it.

“And I thought, ‘That’s a great idea. I should do that’.”

Grandma named the town

Scarlett’s family has lived in the Innisfail area so long, her great grandmother Estella Widman Scarlett named it.

“Innisfail was Poplar Grove at the turn of the century but there was also about a dozen Poplar Groves throughout central Alberta and so nobody was getting their mail,” Scarlett said.

“And so the postmasters called for people to name their locations because they decided, no one could be Poplar Grove -- and so they needed offerings of towns.

“So my great grandma’s Irish, and ‘Innisfail’ means ‘Isle of Destiny’ in Ireland.”

“I’m pretty proud of that,” she said. “I think it’s pretty cool. She was, I guess, a formidable woman.”

The mural

The mural is going up on a stucco wall on the 49 Street Emporium, a building that was constructed in 1929.

Scarlett’s plan is to start painting late next week. The wall is 12 feet high and 50 feet long, but so far, she has raised enough money to create a 20-foot mural (around 30 friends have donated along with a plaque designer and a caterer who offered to provide food for the party after the mural is done).

If she can get more donations, the mural will be larger.

“I’ve got everything crossed (fingers) that funds will be coming in,” she said.

Scarlett has other artistic practices besides painting murals -- she was profiled on CTV News in 2017 when a trendy Miami hotel started to decorate its rooms with her art, and her work is in public and private collections around the world.

She’s also created murals for her community, on the wall of Legion 104 in Innisfail and also the town creamery -- and in 2023, heart bombed the local seniors centre.

Why does it matter to make murals?

“One of my cousins runs a travel agency and they do lots of agricultural tours all over the world,” Scarlett said. “She donated a big chunk of money the other day and she just said, ‘Public art is the thing that defines us.’

“It tells the world who our community is and how we care about each other and the story that we have and how we share and how those things are true and it provides safety and provides pride and all kinds of things.

“It activates conversation about who we are, which I really love.”

For more information about the 100 Friends Mural Project, go here.