Steam punk is a sci-fi style seemingly built especially for Prince George.
The motif marries all the old and new technologies that met in this city when the railroad came through and delivered modern technology into an ages-old community. We have a close relationship in our 100-year history of the trains and mills and ships and telegraph lines that eventually gave way to jets and fiber optics and high-tech factories. Some parts of that early industrialization remain, and what today's Prince George possesses more than anything is a strong grasp of innovation and creativity and embracing the future.
When it came time for Christina Watts to capture the letter C in the Alphabet Project, the arts and culture initiative coordinated by The Citizen and the Community Arts Council, she was drawn to the steam punk aesthetic to tell that story on her canvas.
Flip through the below slideshow to view the Alphabet Project art and a link to each artist story:
"I knew I wanted to focus on the downtown. I knew I wanted to include images like Connaught Hill and the clock tower. It came in layers," said Watts. "I knew I wanted to use industrial images, I just wasn't sure how, at first. Mr. PG was an afterthought but once I figured him into it, it started to tumble together. He's this kooky character, like a cartoon, but he's a hero for our town. So my imagination turned him into an actual cartoonish hero and that's when the steam punk and the industrial images started to take shape for me."
His weapon - against attacking pine beetles, civic apathy, and apocalyptic boredom - is the letter C itself. It's a shape close to Watts's heart, being her first initial. She said the selection of the letter was done by random draw but she couldn't have been happier.
"It's his weapon of mass construction," she said. "He's building a city with it. He's defending our local way of life with it. I gave him a toothpick in his mouth, just to emphasize the idea of wood, of the tough people who built Prince George, and to show Mr. P.G. as more of a person than a postcard. He's a little badass, isn't he?"
Watts works for the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George so she looks down George Street almost every day. She snapped a number of photos to refer to, to the point "I felt like a tourist in my own town" and then set to work on the whimsical imagery.
She said some of the ideas were in her head pre-formed, but some came later after the paint on the canvas informed her imagination. One such example was the dirigibles floating around the Mr. PG hero's head.
"As an artist, you think about the empty spaces," she said, indicating the sky around his cranium. "People talk about Prince George as a port city, but an inland port. So that's where those came from: not ships on the ocean, we use airships."
Watts is one of the city's most successful artists of late, but she still feels like earning one of the 26 spots in the Alphabet Project was a long shot. She was not an avid artist as a child growing up in Smithers, but when she moved to Prince George a little more than 20 years ago, the opportunity arose to learn how to paint. A neighbour, and someone with whom she had a family connection, was Sharren McBride. Watts took an introductory course from McBride through the Prince George Artists' Workshop group at Studio 2880. She was hooked and other seminars soon followed.
Her first public art debut was taking part in the 6x6 Art Auction, then she got involved in Studio Fair, started designing websites, teaching her own art sessions, and this past year she entered and won the Prince George Art Battle event. She will represent the region at the provincial competition in Vancouver this summer.
"I have a few ideas in mind, but I haven't done a 'wet' run yet," she said. Art battle participants are well advised to practice in advance for the timed speed-painting event.
Watts will also be featured in the upcoming Art Of Memory project being coordinated by the Community Arts Council and she will teach art classes at Kordyban Lodge so the cancer patients there, along with their families, can pass the time with creativity.
Next week, the artist featured by the Alphabet Project will be Marie Eve Lavoie with the letter D.
