Take a look at the refurbished doors at the Community Arts Council complex at 2880 15th Avenue.
They're mottled in a most colourful way and it looks quite wonderful, according to local artisans.
And they're going to stay that way.
"We found the patterns quite by accident," said Wendy Young, executive director of the Community Arts Council. "A carpenter, who is also an artist, is who I asked to grind the doors down so we could paint them and put our logo on them. She texted me and said 'you gotta see these!' so when I got there I asked her not to grind down anymore -- but she already knew that."
While carpenter/artisan Lyn Thibault was grinding down the doors, Community Arts Council vice-president Leanna Carlson had also come around the building.
When Thibault pointed out to Carlson what a unique way it would be to creatively display the history of the building, Carlson immediately put a call out to other board members. They voted unanimously to stop the process of stripping the doors right down and instead, kept the artistic version.
"It's our history, in living colour on our doors, so Lyn finished grinding them and put on a mariner's varathane coating to preserve the doors," said Young. "So everyone can enjoy them now."
The doors had been painted white over the years and that paint came off quite easily.
"That's when I started seeing the yellows and blues and even orange in there, too," said Thibault "That's when I realized the history of the whole place was on the doors."
Now we need to know what the building was in its past lives, Thibault added, so there can be a written history to go with what's displayed on the doors.
"It's left some pretty interesting patches of bright colour," Thibault said, who, coincidentally, will be holding her first photography exhibit at the feature gallery in the CAC gift shop in March. "As I was grinding away it was getting funkier and funkier and it was a patchwork of colour and I just couldn't take it right down to the wood. From the street it looks like a work of art."
