THUNDER BAY — A St. Ignatius High School class has been working to clean up the waterfront using their art.
Over the past few months, the class has painted three metal garbage cans to display around Marina Park in Thunder Bay.
Jaeda Lee, a Grade 11 student in the class, said it was a good culminating project to have for the end of the year and also, in general, a “really fun” project to do.
“It’s good to incentivize people to throw their garbage away because lately, we’ve been seeing a lot of trash everywhere and we wanted to solve that problem,” said Lee.
She said she hoped that by painting the garbage cans and people seeing them more clearly, they’d be able to throw all the garbage away.
Kaia DeProphetis, another Grade 11 student, agreed that they were painting the garbage cans not only as a school project but for fun and to help out with the environment.
“Throw your garbage in the trash,” said DeProphetis.
The city supplied the students with the garbage cans after they presented their plans to the public art committee and received the city’s approval.
“In the springtime, it is deplorable how much garbage we have everywhere and so if we can encourage people to utilize these vessels for their design purpose, we are going to be ahead in the game here,” said Red River ward councillor Mike Zussino.
Zussino was first inspired to paint the garbage cans last fall when he and his wife saw the painted garbage cans displayed on the Grand Marais’ waterfront on a trip down to the U.S.
He said it was a really good idea and wanted to see if they could implement it in Thunder Bay.
“My vision for this was to start with three or four and then eventually add more because they become a conversation piece. People will look at them and hopefully, people will utilize them. So, win, win, win,” said Zussino.
While Ecosuperior has done good with the rain barrels, he also hoped the metal cans would last longer than the plastic ones that tend to peel off after a certain time and don’t look as good.
Zussino reached out to Sherry Zurevinski, a St. Ignatius High School art teacher, to see if they would be interested in the project.
“It’s a convenience thing because they’re here, but then I’m sure there are other schools that might jump on,” said Zussino.
Zurevinski has taught at St. Ignatius High School for 30 years. She said it was at the beginning of the semester when she spoke to her students to see if anyone was interested and many groups showed interest.
“The point was just to beautify the marina… with the new art gallery and just trying to for my students to cause a sense of pride,” said Zurevinski.
“And so that they would have that when they walked around, hopefully, we’ll have their names in a small part so that they feel like they’re part of the beautiful things that are going on and all these sculptures and artists sculptures in the marina. So, it’s just to compliment it.”
While Zurevinski wanted everything done on June 18, she said they’re trying to finish the garbage cans before the end of school, even if they have to work a little bit more during exam time to come in to finish.
“We just started working on plans while we’re doing other art assignments, but it took a while for the process to happen,” said Zurevinski.
“So that is why we’re a little bit rushing on what we’re doing because it’s taking a long time to paint them because we have to do many coats of paint to get it to cover nicely on the garbage cans.”
With Zurevinski’s class serving as a successful test pilot for the project, Zussino said he’d like to bring it out further, try different areas and themes and also extend it to other schools and artists they haven’t approached.
