Chloe Chafe on Building Community Through Art

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Art-O-Log. Today I'm chatting with Chloe Chafe. Chloe is a curator and visual artist based in Treaty 1, territory Winnipeg. Their curatorial practice is centered around contemporary street art performance and the promotion of socially conscious art in public spaces. Chloe's research is deeply rooted in creating accessible artworks for communities and emphasizes the enduring impact of mentorship and interdisciplinary collaboration. Recently, they completed a Bachelor of Fine Art History at the University of Manitoba. However, much of their knowledge and expertise has been passed down through rich experiences with community art mentors, colleagues, youth and teachers over the years. Chloe, welcome to the Art-O-Log. Hello, thanks for having me. What are some of your earliest memories of art?

Ooh, great question. You know what I actually have to say. I was very lucky to grow up with aunts and uncles who were professional artists. My aunt, susan Chaffee, is an incredible visual artist and my uncle, rick, is a playwright, so I was actually exposed quite early on, but it wasn't actually until high school and a bit later that. Then I got into the art world. I was definitely a hardcore athlete before that. What kind of sports were you doing? Really everything Hockey, varsity hockey, ringet, basketball just pure jock, super competitive. And then I moved to Kelvin High School a bigger high school in grade 11. And that actually opened a lot of doors just to theater and visual art. I fell completely in love with it. Took me years off of high school and that's when I really dove full-blooded.

Was there a moment in high school where art blew up for you and took over from sports?

I think I was struggling to fit in a way. I moving to schools in grade 11 is a kind of strange, but it was just my own choice. I just wanted something new and the art teacher me in and I was allowed to do art as extra credits to get through to buy my French diploma certificate, and so that I think really having teachers that saw potential and even just my excitement and adoration for it and even opened some doors to a more alternative scheduling of my day, I think that's really where it really kicked off.

And how did you start working in art Basically after high school? I took a few years off to travels, working at the full-time waitress when I was living here at the Easter seven and a quarter and then was able to make enough money to travel for the rest of the year. And once I came back I was around 20 years old, 21, and I was so astounded at how many of my friends were making art and music just in their houses and were really struggling to break that barrier into proper galleries or arts institutions venues. There was a clear barriers, I guess, is the right word. And so after traveling and seeing public arts, street art, public shows, more accessible cool art in bigger cities, that's really where I started doing more warehouse shows like very DIY studio shows, smaller venues, and then through that my business started. In tandem with that, I was in art school and got hired to work at Graffiti Art Programming to work as a studio instructor for their afterschool program, studio 393. So I was working with a lot of street artists through that avenue, gosh.

Can you tell me more about Synonym and how the business itself came about?

Yeah, 100%. I'm the co-founder and co-director of Synonym Art Consultation. So, as I was mentioning, I started that company when I was 21 years old and as I was doing more shows. More when I was 21 years old and as I was doing more shows more, yeah, top foreign exchange district buildings, types of shows and someone who I was working with at the restaurant I was serving at named Andrew Eastman his partner at the time as an incredible artist and was in some of my shows and Andrew approached me and basically was just like listen, I see what you're doing here. There's a real seed of something special.

What do you think if I worked with you and we brought this art even to more accessible spaces restaurants at the time we were working in Bistro 7 1⁄4 and De Seo. There was this big. This was again like 11 years ago. 12 years ago, new local, cool restaurants were just starting in Winnipeg, which is funny to think about. So we brought art there. I teed up with Andrew right from day one. He had the idea for Ciné, namar, consultation, of many words having the same meaning. So art, food, culture, community, all having the same intention and from there it really sparked. It was really the idea of getting local artists and musicians into spaces where people could actually have access to them that aren't only a part of the art world.

In the early stages of your business? How did you balance working on the business and working in the serving industry.

It was just chaos. We worked every single hour, had the power of youth and lived in a cheap apartment and just worked so hard. I was also in art school at the time and working at Studio 393. I think just no sleep. There was not good work-life balance at all. There was not good work-life balance at all. But as starting something and being young and having pure fire, it was just perfect and exciting and in a way, it didn't feel like work because we were just creating something so new and exciting.

At what point did you feel like, okay, this is taking off and I can work?

on this all time, honestly, not till quite late. It probably took eight years, honestly, and we even still do go through phases of doing synonym full time. I'm doing synonym full time, but even Andrew is currently now working halftime at the Forks in a really exciting role. So we really balance whatever's happening in the moment and how busy we are, and even different seasons Like right now it is snowing so we can't paint outside so it becomes a little bit more grant writing season and proposal season. So that makes our life a little more flexible, a little less time sensitive. But yeah, it did take a good eight years at the business to be truly sustainable for us and it's still definitely a work in progress.

Can you tell me more about what a creative director does?

Yeah, it definitely, I think, means a lot of different things depending on where you're working and what industry you're in, but with my role with Synonym, it's quite expansive.

I'll do a lot of work with artists on design, so that can be anywhere from. If we have a client that is needing something specific, like branding colors or messaging a specific type of mural, I'll work very closely with them on their actual design, getting the right color matches, writing artist statements, you name it. But then it can also mean even we just finished a one-year research project at the Forks, so we were there on site working two days a week with them exploring how the Forks can implement this concept of make it beautiful. So with that it was really being working with every single department, anywhere from maintenance to marketing, to events, the market and to implement art into the entire space in a really cohesive, welcoming and accessible way. So I would be meeting with them anywhere from. Again, color choices where we could put art, what artists we're going to work with, how we're going to tell their stories, the multi-pronged approach.

How do you take on artists and how do you support them in your role?

Yeah, good question. It's pretty, pretty flexible, but we are not exclusive with artists, so we don't exclusively represent any artists. We find the city is too small and we want all the artists in the city and, honestly, across Canada to have as many opportunities as possible. So we will work with artists in any which way. We work with visual artists, musicians and drag artists. So there's three elements to synonyms sound, art and drag and so we will do studio visits, go to shows, people will approach us.

It's really an organic pairing in which we work with artists. It's really always being on research duty and then also nurturing those relationships. So a lot of artists we've been working with since day one, some we've just started working with, and it's this ever-growing relationship. And then, when it comes down to it, we'll do anything with artists, from logistics, working on art with them, getting them mentored to create art. That's different. Taking studio artists and training them to be mural artists, to work in different mediums like painting to vinyl, and then, honestly, huge yeah, huge logistics, huge marketing, creating, setting up meetings with clients, handling all their finances for a project, you name it. It's pretty across the board.

Can you speak to the importance of public art in communities, because one part of Synonym is facilitating these murals around the city.

Yeah, I would say one of my life passions is public art. The thought of art being only an institution, like art galleries that you even have to pay to get into, to me I just stand it. But there's also an important, of course. In an art gallery, if you can, there's also an importance, of course. In an art gallery there's a preciousness to it. Artworks can be truly cared for in a safe way. They're shown in a really particular way, though I do love that, of course. But public art is truly. To me, it's a human right. Everyone deserves access to art. Everyone deserves access to culture.

Art can really tell the stories of a neighborhood that you're in. It can create placemaking and a self-worth in the place that you live or go to school or go to work or even just drive through. When you have access to art in public space, it brings a vitality to life that we, I think, can sometimes overlook, especially in such a gray city that struggles with extreme temperatures. To have that sort of respect of the place we're in that we can control, like painting on a building, a sculpture outside a building lighting. It really brings us a sense of identity and something that we have ownership over collectively, and so it takes away some of that individuality that I think sometimes just like owning a piece of artwork in your house can be we co-own these special pieces, and I think that really builds community in that way as well. It's shared living rooms, can you?

speak more to its importance in the city of Winnipegg, or maybe talk about some objects that you've really enjoyed working on here.

Yeah, absolutely. We have a pretty big urban sprawl. It's a very challenging place to live in because of the weather and because of so many things. It's just a really we're so isolated from a lot of the rest of Canada, we're not a big urban center. So I think the importance of art does bring us a sense of pride and identity and kind of can show how colorful and many stories there actually are.

I do find that from the outside sometimes Winnipeg appears rough or isn't as obviously glamorous as maybe Toronto or Montreal, but always people talk about how special the community is and how incredible the people are, and so to me, having that public art and having street art shows what we have on the inside out. It's really important that public art keeps going in Winnipeg because it's important how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves also, I think, having some self-respect. It's such a deeply special place and we want to, we really want that to be on display. One more small, smaller piece to that is also the cultural magic that public art can have. It can also tell the stories of how many beautiful cultures that are here, especially from Indigenous artists, and are incredible yeah, breadth of folks that actually live here.

Yeah, what have been some of your favorite projects that you've worked on in the city?

There's so many. The last year at the Forks was spectacular to have access to the whole kind of controlled neighbors that they have there. But probably one that we're most known for and definitely one that has my heart, because we were just taking that huge leap into the massiveness of public art, is our mural in the North End. We started Wall to Wall Mural Festival about 10 years ago, or 10 years ago exactly, and it was a 10-year project in that we were brought on by the North End Renewal Corporation and it was to do full building murals all around the Dufferin District, right under Higgins on Main Street.

There and there are massive buildings, some are hotels I say quotation marks Some are big warehouses, and it was really a project to bring both international and local artists together to show how spectacular the North End is and to really give it a beautiful color and storytelling. It has a bad reputation. It has been a dangerous area in the city and we really wanted to work with the neighborhood to change that dialogue and to show how much love and community building there is in that space. So I'd say probably that area still has my heart, but it's an impossible question, of course.

So I wanted to talk more about public programming as well as public art, and I think a lot of people wonder how these things get funded and how these projects get off the ground and what the timeline looks like. Can you speak about?

that Absolutely. So we are quite unique. We are a small business Splash Arts Collective and so we had to play a forever game on if we should be a non-profit or a business. But we decided on a business and the reasoning behind that is that we can actually work with nonprofits, charities and businesses so we can do extreme collaborations to make big things happen. So, to answer your question, we have a pretty rock and roll way of doing it Source our funding depending on what the project is.

So something like that North End project that was a combination of working with the North End Renewal Corporation, graffiti art programming with a non-profit charity and then ourselves and we all applied for grants and stitched them together with some sponsorships to make that happen. But anything can really vary. Sometimes it can be artists that apply for grants, sometimes it can be corporate clients that reach out to us that want to do a gift to the neighborhood. The Forks is actually a great example of that. They sell fund and want to give art back to the community. So it really depends.

As far as the funding portion goes, when you're starting a public art project, it can really either begin with we have funding, can we make a piece, or we want to do a project, let's fund funding. So there's those two approaches. Obviously, the easier is when the funding is already there, but once that happens, then if it is an organization, then we work with them to figure out what their needs are, connect them with an artist and then we get going. It can be a pretty extensive stage of consultation, sometimes with elders or the community or workshops, permits, assessing a building on what kind of if we need lifts or scaffolding or ladders, getting all the paint, getting it up and then, ideally, having a community celebration. That's really where we get to celebrate the artwork with the community and, if not at least then doing a big social media campaign, communications campaigns, so the public has access to the works and can understand the breadth of information that it holds.

For these public pieces. What is their lifespan like?

Yeah, it totally depends Some of them. So, yeah, we've had one project that was on the public safety building that was actually we knew was only going to be up for one year. So the artist, mike Velcour, actually created a tribute to missing and murdered Indigenous women and the concept around it because he knew that it was indigenous women and the concept around it because he knew that it was coming down. The concept was that the artwork would change as the bulldozer came through and symbolized the hopeful ending of this epidemic. So it would really. It had this beautiful symbology that's pretty specific. That's the farthest end of the spectrum of a temporary work, but we have had pieces up since the day we started.

The first ever mural we created 11 years ago is on the food fair in West Broadway on Sherbrooke. There it's called Hobby Love and it is in pristine condition, literally perfect. So with most pieces it's that they're forever. Sometimes businesses change. Chip's Vintage is a good example of that On Sherbrooke. It used to be actually my cousin's clothing shop, so it had specific a mural that had more specific branding to that. But then we changed it with Chip to make a specific mural for his building on the same wall. So in that case we talked to the artist before we let them know. But yeah, the short answer is they can last forever if the weather's good, if the conditions are good, especially more with our digital works, the vinyl and dive bond panels. Those have UV protection, graffiti protection, we can reprint them. They're pretty special. They're definitely more suited than just a painted piece on a rough concrete.

Yeah For, specifically, a mural. What is the timeline like from the initial idea to its community celebration?

It can be anything from like three months to three years. So that start to finish project can just completely depend if the money is there, if the building approval is there. Uh, sometimes the business want the mural but the but they rent from someone so that can cause a whole other uh can of worms of approvals. Uh, so it can be super fast. We run, we get there, we make it happen if everything the green light and we have everything we need. But sometimes it can take up to two years with a variety of factors what have been some career highlights for you.

I would say one of them is creating the wall-to-wall graffiti art programming mentorship program. That's a program we did for say, six years, so that was when we developed workshops and specific programs so that youths age 13 to 28 would have access to professional artists so they could do some career development completely for free after quotation mark after school and then move on to then being professional mural artists or musicians or industry professionals. That's definitely one of my apps. I think mentorship and free access to education and workshops is one of the most important pieces of culture. What have been?

some tougher moments, and how did you overcome them?

Yeah, yeah, probably the toughest thing in general the kind of zoom out has definitely been finding work-life balance, making it work. Yeah, experiencing burnout those are pretty common in our industry because it is can be precarious work. We're doing something that doesn't really exist a lot Plus a problem solving. Honestly, the pandemic was pretty challenging. We had to completely shift our business and it was, of course, pretty scary, and it was so scary for everyone for a thousand reasons. It was definitely pretty scary for us as small business owners when it did lead to, because we didn't even know if we could paint on the street with the restrictions.

So we did end up doing a bunch of research as fast as humanly possible and shifting to creating digital artworks. So what kind of started as the most terrifying element of our careers and lives, of course, and lives of people across the world, did result in a shift of art making. That was really special and brought a lot of actual international artwork sharing. That was really special because we were able to get submissions from people from literally across the planet and share stories. So that was really special, from literally across the planet and share stories. So that was really special. But, yeah, I'd say the biggest picture is always, as we're always experimenting in art making and trying to create an equitable workplace for everyone and safe and innovative projects is to really make sure that everyone's taken care of and that we're taking care of ourselves as much as we're also taking care of everyone around us.

Yeah, where do you see Synonym going in the future?

Such a good question. Yeah, you know what? It's always been such an evolving project. I think in a dream world I do see tech coming into a big part of what we do. We are currently working with some software developers, app developers, on how we can actually create a more 3D and immersive experience into our murals, and so that's I'm nervous to say too much, but yeah, to definitely get into the augmented reality world.

But I think really what it's going to come down to is pushing the envelope on what accessible art looks like. Accessibility from ensuring that, no matter your abilities, income, bracket, where you are in the world, that we can create something really cool and that you feel welcome and that your mind is blown. I think that really, the accessibility and equitable nature of what we do, I hope can just expand and expand while really maintaining the innovation. Yeah, I think that's like the very abstract answer, but the thing that's always excited me about Synonym is the cross-collaboration between music, artwork and drag artists, and I think, as we progress, that crossover is just going to keep developing and reworking and just growing stronger than ever.

So I think that collaboration is really the pinnacle from looking forward to what's some advice that you'd have for someone hoping to get involved in a more logistical side of art?

I don't know. Yeah, it's tough, but it's very needed. It's very needed. Focusing on your people skills is probably number one. Being a good person, truly keeping your values are what you believe in, and taking care of everyone around you, particularly artists and the public. Those two just deserve respect and accountability. I think, just people that they can trust in order to focus on art making and providing, sharing stories that are vulnerable and exciting and risk-taking. I think it really just does come back to that trust and taking care of yourself and others.

Amazing. Thank you so much for that advice, chloe, and thank you for being on the podcast today my pleasure.

Thank you so much for having me.