Daron Letts
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 22/05) - On Monday, artist Diane Boudreau will officially open her makeshift outdoor urban art studio in the parking lot on the corner of 50th Street and 51st Avenue.

She uses the space to create public art with group home residents and other drop-in artists.

Last year, she and her collaborators produced a series of colourful murals that now hang on the parking lot side of the Yellowknife Inn. Dene artist Leo Tatsiechele painted nine of the pieces. Mervin Olikoak and Sam Netley help maintain the site.

Trained as a biologist and environmental designer, Boudreau works full-time as an artist, funding her projects by writing grants and collecting bottles and cans for the recycling depot.

"I combine what I know in the fields of biology and architecture with my visual art," she said. "With plywood and latex, you can make anything."

Her materials are donated by hardware stores in exchange for her sign-painting skills. She shapes the plywood into insects, flowers, musical instruments or whatever else sparks her whimsy. Her recent projects include hand-painted business signs, private commissions and two painted benches that will be installed beside John Sabourin's new soapstone sculpture at McAvoy Rock in Old Town. Sabourin and Boudreau were hired to create the pieces by the Federation Franco-Tenoise.

Her outdoor stone installations are located around town. She painted the giant brontosaurus at the paleontology museum in Old Town. The painted core sample boxes in the public library are her pieces, as well.

Boudreau will keep the workshop running until the first snowfall. The project is not funded, so she is accepting donations of bottles and cans. They can be dropped off at the studio on weekdays between 1 and 6 p.m.

"I hope that some nonprofit organization will be interested in associating themselves with this project to keep it going next year," she said.

Boudreau is also a board member with Western Arctic Moving Pictures. She documented last year's urban art studio in a short film and is now working on a two-minute video on the construction of the new federal building on Franklin Avenue.