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A chance to leave their mark

After tapping into basically every artistic event that Whistler has to offer over the years, Daniel Poisson and Corinna Haight recently decided to broaden their horizons, and creative reach, to Central America.

After tapping into basically every artistic event that Whistler has to offer over the years, Daniel Poisson and Corinna Haight recently decided to broaden their horizons, and creative reach, to Central America.

The talented local artists recently returned from a six-month adventure in Central America, where they were commissioned to fill a new hostel, Luna's Castle Hostel, with their vibrant canvases in exchange for free materials, flights, room and board.

"The first three months, we were commissioned to paint whatever we wanted, complete freedom of expression, for a four-floor international hostel," Poisson said. "...We painted everything and anything we could think of to keep it as diverse as possible, so there is no real style or rhyme or reason. We used every colour of the rainbow and every subject from portrait work to graffiti-style stencil work to abstract."

Poisson first moved to Whistler about six years ago. Haight came to the area almost eight years ago, and in that time, they've collectively produced their own music and art events, painted live at every major festival in town, and exhibited their work in businesses throughout town.

"The house that we lived in in Brio was plastered with my work," Poisson recalled during a recent interview. "People started buying pieces and I started getting offers to paint at festivals."

Today, they primarily use acrylics and spray paint, sometimes incorporating watercolours, charcoals, paper collage and other mediums to create different effects.

While the trip to Panama was an amazing experience, it wasn't all fun and games - a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into creating the desired gallery effect.

"It was definitely an exercise in my ability to see what I could accomplish," Poisson said. "We had to come up with the size of all the pieces and the wood was all raw materials from a lumber yard. We had to get it cut and build all of the canvases by hand."

By the end of their stay, they had completed about 130 canvases.

"They wanted it to be like a gallery," Haight said.

Now, they're preparing to undertake yet another massive project, but this time, it's much closer to home. Poisson and Haight have been selected to complete the next bridge mural project for the Resort Municipality of Whistler.

They were still in Central America when they heard about the competition, and decided to submit their vision to the Public Arts Committee for consideration.

"We were in Panama and we got the call for entry and we were really, really busy," Haight said, adding that they almost didn't submit a design.

A day before deadline, Poisson and Haight decided to take the plunge; they locked themselves in the garage at the hostel and stayed up all night, drawing up plans and developing their creative vision for the project.

"We wanted to have another project ready to go after Panama," Haight said. "...We didn't really know what we were going to do when we got back to Canada."

Their piece, entitled Full Circle, will span the 65' by 6' facing sides of the Blackcomb Way Bridge underpass, along the footpath leading from the Village to Upper Village.

"Essentially, the piece is designed to be a 360 degree piece," Poisson explained. "It starts with a person sitting on the highest point on earth overlooking the Whistler valley, overlooking the forests of the valley below, past the swamps and marsh and grasslands, though the rocky bluffs lining the seashore, and into the seashore."

The mural delves deeper, into the realm of the ocean and the creatures that live underwater.

"Looking beyond that, you have to rise up out of the ocean back to the seashore and into the mountains, and those mountains on the far side of the ocean are basically the mountains behind this guy sitting on the highest point, creating a full circle."

They plan to start work in late April and complete the project by the end of June.

The mural will also be the ultimate exercise in painting in the public eye, an activity both artists seem to enjoy.

"Painting live is awesome - it's my favourite thing to do, actually, because you have to do it fast and you're often distracted by people, so the work tends to come out quite free and instinctive," Poisson explained.

This will be, by far, the largest "canvas" either artist has tackled, but they seem up for the challenge. They've done their research, finding special primer and durable, acrylic latex paints that can be used on walls, and UV coating to protect the final product.

"Even though it's in a harsh environment with big temperature fluctuations, it should last a very long time," he said.

They've also adapted their original plan - a 9' long by 9" wide ink drawing - and plan to scale and grid the wall.

"We photographed it very high-resolution to make it as big of an image as possible, and it was all manipulated in Photoshop to create the full-colour mock-up for the mural," Poisson said.

Both artists seem pretty keyed up for the project, and are happy to have their work on display for all to see, both before and after the Olympics in 2010.

"I think it's exciting to live here for so long and get a chance to have your art displayed for a really long time for people to see, and to leave your mark on Whistler," Haight said.