World Famous Painter Of Waterfront Mural Returns To Saint John This Summer
SAINT JOHN – Sean Yoro (popularly known as Hula) is returning to Saint John this summer to paint a new mural on the waterfront and he’ll leave a lasting legacy this time around, in the form of a 28- by 40-foot piece of artwork that will be displayed somewhere in the city on a permanent basis.
Discover Saint John mentioned the idea of a return visit to Saint John in a conversation late last year, and he jumped at the idea. “We’d love to have you back, and he said, ‘Well I might have some time this summer,’ ” said executive director Victoria Clarke in an interview.
Yoro had only one condition: the artist who had made his name doing outdoor murals that are eventually washed away by the elements wanted to do something permanent here. He told the Discover Saint John team that people would often show him images of the Saint John mural on their phones, and ask where they could go to view it in person.
“He said that his only regret was there wasn’t a legacy of that particular piece in Saint John because of the popularity of the piece that he had created,” said Clarke. “He said, ‘I would love to have directed all of the people who asked me about it to go to Saint John and see it.’ “
Clarke loved that idea as long as he still created the work itself down by the waterfront. “We still wanted to have the highest tides on the planet be the star of the show. That is the unique selling feature for our city,” she said.
In August 2017, Yoro painted a large mural of a woman on a seawall at the Pugsley parking lot. At low tide, residents and visitors arriving on cruise ships could see her head and arms. At high tide, only her fingertips were visible.
Yoro’s canvas was “like a gravel driveway after we pressure washed it,” says Clarke. The mural is barely visible now. “She is still there covered in sea life. It hasn’t washed away.”
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When Yoro returns this summer, likely in early August, he will paint the mural at Market Slip. Discover Saint John appeared before Common Council earlier this week to get permission to use the city-owned site. They will attach a large aluminum canvas to the seawall and Yoro will work away in full view of residents and tourists that populate the restaurants and walkways on that busy stretch of the inner harbour.
“He will still be using the 28-foot tides that come in and out every six hours as his scaffolding to paint the mural,” said Clarke. “[There will be] really great sightlines to the boardwalk, Market Square and the Hilton, and Harbour Passage, where so many people in the summer enjoy spending time.”
Clarke says Yoro feels a special connection to the city, the vibe of which reminds him of his native Hawaii.
“He loves our community,” she said. “He travels around the world and grew up on a small island within the Hawaiian Islands and that feeling of Mahalo, which is that welcome and family feeling, [he] has only felt it in one other place in the world, and that was when he was here in Saint John.”
Yoro is world-famous for his murals in remote places like on rock faces alongside waterfalls and on trees in remote forests. His Saint John mural was featured on CNN.com, and won regional and international awards for Discover Saint John and area partners that helped work to make it happen.
Clarke says Saint John is fortunate to have someone like Yoro, who was included in a “top 30 under 30” Art & Style list by Forbes last year, embrace the opportunity to do something artistic in the city.
“He’s going into another level of the stratosphere as far as global notoriety, so we’re really lucky in a small town, in a small province, that we can have a world leading artist that has an environmental conscience that wants to do a really incredible artistic feat in our city again,” she said.
“The parting gift of this project is that [Yoro] wanted something that was a legacy piece. He wanted to create a legacy for Saint John. When he is done we will take it out of the very unforgiving North Atlantic and find a permanent home for it in Saint John.”
Clarke says they don’t yet know where that home will be. They will determine the best location and finalize details around Yoro’s visit in the coming months.