Community Projects – Giving Back To Our Town
- 2021 – Land Acknowledgement Plaque
- 2019/2020 – The Ottawa Valley Rail Trail Project
- 2018 – Clayton Community Centre Mural – The Bellamy Grist Mill
- 2017 – The “Buckyball” – Textile Mills of the Mississippi River Valley
- 2016 – Almonte Farmers Market Mural
- 2015 – Mill St. Streetscape
- 2014 – Mississippi Mills Street Banners
2021 – Land Acknowledgement Plaque
The pandemic prevented us from gathering as a group to create art projects for our town. However, we wished to continue our tradition of giving back at each AITA show so we purchased a Land Acknowledgement Statement Plaque that was created by Colleen Gray, an Indigenous artist and member of our association. This plaque is to be installed in the Ron Caron Auditorium in Almonte Old Town Hall where AITA takes place.
2019/2020 – The Ottawa Valley Rail Trail Project
This project highlights different modes of transportation through the ages with an Almonte twist. It consists of 18 panels, each measuring 32 x 24 inches. When mounted, the art project will be approx 40 ft long.
The upper portion consists of 12 painted panels and shows a basketball travelling across the sky from early dusk to midnight, passing eras of air transport and though various types of weather.
The bottom portion consists of 6 panels of various medium (pyrography, photography and painting) and depicts eras of train transport travelling through the seasons.
The association is working to find an appropriate location to mount the panels along the Ottawa Valley Rail Trail in Almonte.
2018 – Clayton Community Centre Mural – The Bellamy Grist Mill
For their 2018 community project, the association created an 8′ x 8′ mural of the Bellamy Grist Mill that was at the heart of Clayton when it was founded by Edward Bellamy in 1824. The mill is no longer standing so mural was created to showcase this important piece of local history. The mural is mounted on the Clayton Community Centre. The Centre was built in the 1970s with funds raised by the community and is truly a testament to the strength of this small rural village and surrounding area.
The mural was created in a poster style using a matching colour palette and style to a second mural for the Centre which portrays the Bellamy Sugar Camp in 1912. (It was created by Crown and Pumpkin Tour artists).
2017 – The “Buckyball” – Textile Mills of the Mississippi River Valley
The textile industry played a significant role in the founding and development of our area. Almonte became the capital of the wool industry in Canada and was known as “Little Manchester”. As a Canada 150 commemorative project, the association made a buckyball that portrays the textile mills in the Mississippi River Valley in Lanark County.
A buckyball is like a soccer ball; 32 panels that form a sphere. 32 artists chose a mill to represent in their own medium and style on a panel of the buckyball. Our buckyball measures 5 ft in diameter when assembled.
It was unveiled at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum during the show opening festivities in May 2017. A book of information and pictures collected about the mills and a large map indicating the location of the mills was included in the project.
2016 – Almonte Farmers Market Mural
The mural depicts the Almonte Farmers Market circa 1910 and is mounted in Market Square, (the parking lot behind upper Mill St.) the location of the old Almonte Farmers Market. The original mural was completed in 1991 but had degraded over time. So for the 2016 AITA collaborative project, 4A members recreated the mural. The project was generously sponsored by Mr. Reg Gamble and family and the mural was unveiled at AITA.
The original mural was designed by Noreen Young and painted by a number of 4A members at the time. Over 25 years later, the current members of 4A recreated the mural from the original. It consists of five 8 x 4 ft high panels. The project took several months and hundreds of hours to complete.
2015 – Mill St. Streetscape
For the 25th anniversary of Art In The Attic, 4A members produced a streetscape of Mill St. in Almonte as it would have appeared in 1991, the year of the first Art In The Attic. Eighteen panels were created by each artist in their own style and when assembled, the streetscape measures 26 feet long. It was first on display at the Fairview Manor Gallery and has now been donated to Almonte General Hospital for display along “The Link” corridor that joins Fairview Manor and AGH.
2014 – Mississippi Mills Street Banners
In 2013, several 4A members noticed that the street banners in Mississippi Mills could be improved. They felt that the commercially produced banners in use did not adequately reflect the rich textile heritage of the town. As a result, the members designed three banners that were later sewn by local textile artists/quilters/sewers with materials provided by the municipality. With three different municipal wards, a single banner pattern was not suitable for capturing the uniqueness of each ward. However, there needed to be a common element in each pattern to unify the look of Mississippi Mills. The results are shown below and during the summer months you could see these banners on display throughout Mississippi Mills.
In recent years, the banners have been replaced with permanent metal banners.
Almonte & Area Artists Association 