North Kamloops basketball courts undergoing artistic facelift thanks to unique collaboration

Photo: Mallory Tolcher

The final basketball court design created by Mallory Tolcher and inspired by local students.

The basketball courts at McDonald Park are getting an artistic makeover inspired by artwork created by Kamloops students.

The Kamloops Art Gallery, the City of Kamloops, SD73's After School program and artist Mallory Tolcher have joined forces to give the courts an artistic facelift.

Mallory Tolcher is an Ontario artist who challenges the stigma of women in sports by combining traditionally feminine elements with basketball culture. She recently collaborated with the WNBA for an exhibition game in Toronto.

Tolcher told Castanet she met Craig Willms of the Kamloops Art Gallery by chance through an exhibit in Abbotsford, and that led to the McDonald Park collaboration.

“We bonded over the sport and how both of our practices involve the participation of others,” she said.

Willms reached out to Tolcher after the exhibition and asked if she wanted to collaborate with him on a court in Kamloops.

Tolcher said they decided to involve the After School program because kids are going to be using the court the most.

“I think it's important to use the individuals that actually frequently use the space and get their ideas and opinions because the court [will] be used by them,” she said.

“I think that there's a lot of pride and ownership that goes with community arts.”

To involve the students, Tolcher sent activities and prompts to the After School program that students were able to work on over a few weeks.

“My goal was to have them think of what it means to grow as an individual, grow as a community,” she said.

Once the activities were completed, they were sent over to Tolcher and she drew inspiration from the kids’ designs.

“A lot of the recurring themes that I saw were ones of nature — like sunrises or sunsets, plants. I really liked the imagery that they used of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly,” she said.

“I used those kinds of ideas of growth as a connection with nature — so the final design is growth starting from either side of the court.”

From late May until the end of June, students will be working on painting the design created by Tolcher.

Tolcher said her favourite part of the project has been receiving photos of the children painting the mural, and the happiness they exude while working on it.

She said she would love to be on site while the kids are painting it, but is just excited that the kids are enjoying their time collaborating on this piece of art.

“I think the most exciting thing is that the mural will live on as something that they collaborated to create,” she said.

Tolcher said the city was very eager to do more projects, and Kamloops could expect more similar murals to come in the future.