Cafe turns empty lot into outdoor theatre

We already have a drive-in theatre. The Black Donkey Cafe's art team is now putting the finishing touches on Prince George's first chair-in theatre.

Sitting outside to watch a movie (TV sports, slide shows, electro-kaleidoscopes, etc.) is an idea as old as cinema itself. Black Donkey proprietor Chris Blackier is drawn to entertainment events by nature - he is a deejay and musician - so the blank wall staring at him every day across the parking lot at his downtown coffee shop started to spark ideas.

The cafe is already a magnet for artists, with paintings and other creations all over the downtown space. Music is a regular feature in the small shop, and with a parking lot next door surrounded by buildings and a sidewalk fence, Blackier has already hosted some initial outdoor events in that lot, and this past week he and some artist friends took the next step.

Blackier, Jen Pighin, Sarah Dawn, Natasha Louise and Andrew Mooney - all of them noted local artists - gave new visual life to that blank parking lot wall. A blazing mural of their combined efforts now colours the southeast view at the intersection of Third Avenue and George Street.

But what is that perfectly rectangular blank spot in the middle of the planets and auroras and colour waves? It is where projections will soon show films and other visual media.

"This all started when I was sitting here with Grinch (acclaimed artist Greg Gislason, painter of the Prince George Airport's mural entitled Spirit Of The Games) looking across the empty lot at the mural on Groop Gallery," said Blackier. "All we had was a blank cinderblock wall. It was just so blank. And right there you could see how it could look if someone put their mind to it. So I called the owners of the building, talked to them about our vision, and got their permission to go ahead. They liked our plan: the chair-in theatre."

That idea was inspired by Prince George's drive-in theatre, one of Blackier's favourite local entertainment attractions.

The artists came from Blackier's rolodex of artist contacts, many of them people who display their work on his coffee shop walls for sale or exhibition. The leader of the exercise was Sarah Dawn, the spray queen of Prince George. She is one of the city's most prominent spray-can painters, and makers of non-vandal graffiti.

"Everyone involved has just been flowing in and flowing out, adding their parts as their time allows," said Dawn. "Chris asked us to take part, then he basically gave us free rein to do whatever we wanted out there."

Mooney had worked in the spray-paint medium before (he did the large painting of two hands touching together at circled fingers that hangs from the Black Donkey ceiling), but Pighin, although she is one of the region's best known artists, was in new creative territory.

"I'd never used spray cans before. I'm addicted," she said.

"This is a new way to show Prince George's talent off," said Dawn. "It's never going to happen by just talking about it. We have to get our work out there, into public view, so Prince George is seen for what it is: incredibly ethnically diverse, full of interesting subcultures, and home to very talented artists."

That part of the Black Donkey mural was their way of evangelizing. Other walls around the city are blank, and worse for it. The public, said all three, would be best served by investing in images on those visual flat spots.

"Let's make beauty happen," Dawn said. "You don't even notice these walls, but if something amazing was painted there, you'd really see it and appreciate the whole street around it. A lot of these walls get tagged (vandal graffiti) anyway, so this would be a positive thing to see instead. I want those spaces beautiful and sending positive messages about Prince George."

Now that the Black Donkey parking lot's mural is almost finished, Blackier said he will soon be putting that imagery to even more use when he finalizes the legalities around hosting public gatherings in that space.