Making things Beautiful: Rainworks & Barrington Street Bouquet bring Art to the Streets of Halifax

Throughout the year, the Downtown Halifax Business Commission accepts grant applications from local businesses proposing ideas on how to beautify the downtown. Argyle Fine Art was fortunate enough to have two of our creative ideas accepted, which was just the best news ever ! We are really excited to bring art to the streets once again this year, with a bigger and better version of our successful  RAINWORKS project of late last summer as well as a new project we're calling Barrington Street Bouquet! This year we're calling our Rainworks project "SAY Something!" and this brilliant branding has been created by Nick Brunt which you'll also see around town in conjunction with the installations!

 Last year, artist Nick Brunt was also our featured artist who created a series of stencils based on his own brand of inspirational typography and quotes. He installed all the Rainworks around town and it was amazing! This year, Nick is sharing what he has learned and teaching 5 more artists how to effectively work with the rainworks medium and help him take over the city, with a minimum of 10 new Rainworks for all of us to enjoy when it rains.

Participating artists are still being confirmed but we're excited to be hosting a workshop this Tuesday, July 11th, 6pm-8:30pm which is free for anyone to attend that may be interested in learning more about this project ; especially other downtown businesses that may want a Rainworks installation near their business. We hope to install all the Rainworks creations by the end of July, weather permitting and we'll be talking all about it via social media.

Below is a quick video that sums up how our Rainworks project came to be and shows a bit of the process and final result, which was filmed by the amazing Dave Culligan as part of his 365 day long Love Letter to Nova Scotia:  

Actually, we also want to just take a moment here and congratulate Nick Brunt on his rad cover he created for The Coast this week. YAY!

Ok....you still with us? We still have to tell  you about the Barrington Street Bouquet!  We got this idea from an article we read about an artist who brought beauty to trash cans around his city. You can read the article HERE  We were so inspired by this idea that we approached the Ikebana Shop to see if they would help us bring this concept to life in one of our trash cans located on Barrington Street. We're excited to say that Miyako Ballesteros agreed to take on this daunting task to beautify the city -one trash can at a time. The street bouquet will bring an unexpected beauty to the city and transform the ordinary to extraordinary! This "living sculpture" will be in place for one week beginning on July 23rd!

An example of one of the designs by Lewis Miller in New York that inspired our project her