The Main ARTery is slated to make a comeback with a new art installation on Main Street.
Last year, the project included banners strung up to lampposts down Main Street, with each banner showing off work from a local artist. The new proposal will be different - to show off a unique northern piece prominently on Flin Flon’s main drag.
This year’s main piece will be a large birchbark biting, mounted on one of the windows of the Flin Flon Public Library. The piece, reproduced by the Flin Flon Arts Council and local artist Hilary MacDonald, will be backlit during evenings.
The piece and its development was done by the arts council independent of the group that oversaw last year’s Main Artery kickoff, the Main Street Revitalization Committee. When the arts council reached out to the committee for support, it was received almost immediately.
The birchbark biting is the latest in an ongoing series of art installations meant to give Flin Flon’s aging Main Street a visual pop. The arts council oversaw a small mural painting in an abandoned building earlier this summer and will carry out another one later this month, along with purchasing juniper bushes and planters to be placed in vacant lots along Main Street. More displays in vacant front shop windows are also on deck, likely for next summer. The council is also overseeing the Pineroot Mural Festival, which will involve two murals being painted in west Flin Flon - one along the Perimeter and another along Main Street on removable boards.
The original Main ARTery banners may also be mounted in the windows of the Flin Flon Hotel during winter, making the pieces visible after snow falls. That idea is not yet finalized.
Another, new set of Main ARTery banners is set to be made and mounted next summer. The banners did not fly on Main Street this year, replaced by the banners taken up by new banners paying tribute to the Hapnot Collegiate graduating class.
