From Leslie:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION – LEACOCK CHAIRS

PAINTING Chairs
-       Sand the Chair lightly with about 240 Grit Sandpaper.
-       Use good-quality Acrylic (suitable for outdoors) or Exterior Latex Paints.

VARATHANING Chairs
-       Please only use: Flecto Varathane / Water based / Diamond Clear / Exterior Use.
-       Chair will need 4 – 6 Coats!

**NOTE**
– We will be sealing the lexan panel to the Chair armrests at a later date.
– You can unscrew and remove the ‘top piece’ of the Chair armrests to paint and work inside these armrests.
– And … to avoid any confusion: the bulk of your design goes on the Chair ‘cushions’ (and I suggest working on these first); however, the entire Chair needs to be painted (or decoupaged, decorated, etc.).
**

PHOTOS for the Guidebook
- Photos will be taken at your studio or residence between May 21 – 31.
- We will be in touch to schedule this (headshot of each artist / Chair).

KEEP YOUR SPONSOR in the Loop
-       We need our Sponsors to continue the Streets Alive project!
-       Please thank them and send them email and photo updates.

BUILDING THE HYPE / PROMOTING THE PROJECT!
-       Voting on the Chairs is by ‘People’s Choice’! The more people that know about your Chair, the more voting will take place.
-       HOW? Get all of your contacts to join the Orillia Streets Alive Facebook Group. (Don’t underestimate the power of social media!)
-       Post photos of your Chair coming to life on our Facebook page.
-       Tweet / Blog / Email / Write / Talk about YOUR Chair and the project at every opportunity! It takes ALL of us to build the 2012 Leacock Chairs project to its full potential! Let’s rock this town

Here’s a note from the Streets Alive chairperson, Leslie Fournier:

–

We now have ALL 50 Sponsored Artists / Chairs for the 2012 Leacock Chairs Project!
We are thrilled to move on to the very exciting next step of the project!

Chair pick-up begins tomorrow. Instructions are below. For those who emailed asking for their chair to be delivered: this will happen on Wednesday / Thursday / Friday of this week. To help offset the cost of gas for our volunteer driver, the Delivery Charge is $10 if you live in town and $20 if you are out of town.

CHAIR PICK-UP
- Chairs are available beginning on April 10 (from 10am to noon and from 4pm to 7pm).
- Pick-up location is 3 Royce Ave, Orillia (off of Queen St. W. / near the old Canadian Tire Building). This is our chairmaker Ron Schell’s studio. Ron has Unit #5 — pull around the back side of the building.
- Please make every effort to pick up your chair (you need a pickup truck OR empty van).
- If you can NOT get your chair and need it delivered, send me an email, please!

PAINTING:
- Cushions are removable from the chairs (so you can work on the cushions separately).
- Chairs come primed grey.
- Good-quality acrylics or exterior latex both work (but feel free to share ideas / paint choices and suppliers among yourselves, ‘artists to artists’).
- Finished chairs need to be coated with varathane (we will give you the best product name when you pick up your chair).
- Artists will have approximately SIX WEEKS to paint their chairs.
- Finished chairs will be photographed May 21–31.

ARTIST HONORARIUMS:
- We will have your cheques ($300) for you when you pick up your chairs. (Twenty-five of the cheques will be post-dated to May 1 and 12 to June 1 to allow us to get all of the sponsorship money collected).

Best,
Leslie

A small selection of the incredible submissions received from our talented local artists.

We now have 34 individual sponsors on board. And we are thrilled to announce a special sponsorship of the 2012 Juried Prize of $3,000 by Leon’s Furniture of Orillia.

A binder of the colour-photocopied designs accepted by Streets Alive! for sponsor selection is now available at Apple Annie’s Cafe on Mississaga Street in downtown Orillia.

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of A Small Town, the Leacock Museum has released a souvenir calendar. It features 12 cartoons that appeared in the Montreal Star when Sunshine Sketches first appeared in newspaper serialized form.

Streets Alive! is pleased to announce the launch of our newest street-art theme and the title of the 2012 Orillia Streets Alive! project:

Leacock Chairs

Celebrating 100 years of Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

A public outdoor art exhibit presented by Streets Alive! Orillia

 Orillia’s Streets Alive! invites artists to submit their applications to participate in an innovative outdoor public art exhibit called Leacock Chairs. The “gallery” will be Orillia’s city streets during the summer of 2012.

$20,000 in Prize Money

Juried art award: $3,000

Artist Honorarium: $300 per artist

Our prototype chair, designed by Ron Schell:

Artists will be working with incredible hand-crafted metal sculptures modelled after a reading chair owned by Stephen Leacock. This original chair can be seen at the Leacock Museum in Orillia.

Artists will transform the chair sculptures into original works of art. The chairs will be unveiled to the public at the Streets Alive! 2012 kickoff event on June 23. People’s Choice voting will open and continue until July 28, when winners will be announced as part of Downtown Orillia’s Leacock Sidewalk Sale event.

The chairs will be displayed in downtown Orillia from June 23 to late October. The exhibit will be supported with a guide featuring a map, a profile of each chair and artist, and sponsor information. At the end of the exhibit, several of the chairs will be sold through online auction. Proceeds will support Orillia’s Streets Alive! program in its ongoing work to promote Orillia as a premiere destination for outdoor art.

The sponsor of each chair has ownership rights to their chair. Group-sponsored chairs become the property of Orillia’s Streets Alive! program.