Riding the Current – An Elevator Wrap!

I don’t normally talk about anything related to my day job on here, but this is too cool not to.

Some time ago, there was a call out at my work for an art project that had to do with ARDI (anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion). I submitted a piece I had finished recently and didn’t think anything of it for a while.

When I painted “Current”, my intent was twofold. I wanted to paint something that showed the two facets of myself. I was born with spastic Cerebral Palsy and was diagnosed with relapse remitting Multiple Sclerosis in 2014. I’m also gay and was finally comfortable enough to come out of the closet when I was eighteen.

In “Current”, I wanted to show the upstream battle that I’ve had to fight my entire life, always having to swim. I was inspired by salmon who swim upstream when it’s time and the red colour that begins to show on their scales. They fight to swim upstream, following an instinct that is part nature and part nurture. They shine because they just do.

I wanted to show in some way that, despite trying to blend into the crowd and be so called normal, my true self shines through anyways, no matter what I try to do. It’s also a celebration of the uphill battle that I’ve always fought against and won every single time because I choose to.  The piece took me a few hours to do and I was so happy with how it turned out.

A few weeks had gone by and then I received an email saying that my work had bee chosen along with eleven other pieces had been chosen by eleven talented artists. That work would be made into elevator wraps for the twelve elevators that are in our office building. I was gobsmacked! I didn’t even know what an elevator wrap was, but I was still overjoyed. When I realized what elevator wraps were, I was over the moon happy!

I finally got to see my elevator wrap today and it still doesn’t seem real, but I have the photos to prove it!  I’m so glad that a painting I did is now part of an instillation to help symbolize inclusion and equality. I’m overjoyed that this is something that people will see every time they go into the building.

I’m so happy and overjoyed and so thrilled that my art is being seen by so many people. It makes my heart and spirit happy. I’m also amazed that a 10 by 10 inch piece is now covering an entire elevator door. It shows that big things really do come in small packages.