Jill von Stanton – CAN AND WILL

JILL STANTON is an artist and muralist from Edmonton, Alberta. She has extensive experience painting large scale murals, for both private and public clients, interior and exterior, across North America. Over the past seven years, she has produced over 60 murals of varying complexity and size. Jill has painted walls for several mural festivals, including the Vancouver Mural Festival, Winnipeg’s Wall to Wall, Tulsa’s Habit Festival, Dallas’ Wild West Mural Fest, Victoria’s Concrete Canvas Project, and BUMP 2018 in Calgary. Jill strives to ensure that her mural work reflects the community, environment, neighbourhood, and the city in meaningful ways; her process is often research based and is very site specific. Her work combines abstract elements with the representative, using still life objects paired with some exaggerated elements of human scale (hands, feet) in order to weave open-ended narratives.

CAN AND WILL was painted in 2019 in collaboration with the Rust Magic International Street Mural Festival, City of Edmonton, City Cellars and the 124 Street & Area Business Association. It is located on the south and east facing walls of City Cellars at 10505 123 St NW, Edmonton, AB T5N 1N9

Artist Statement:

“CAN AND WILL”, 2019, Edmonton. When presented with this location for Rust Magic I knew immediately that I wanted to use a can motif—reflecting not only the business in the building (City Cellars), but also as a nod to the nearby “Brewery District” and the decommissioned Molson factory one block over. Most importantly, I wanted to use cans to demonstrate the wonder of aluminum recycling. Aluminum recycling is one of the only aspects of modern recycling that actually *works*—it’s a process that’s over 95% efficient (!!!), can be repeated indefinitely with no loss in quality, and about 75% of all aluminum produced worldwide since 1881 is STILL IN PRODUCTION TODAY. That is wild! It means that a tallboy or club soda you buy at the store today may have aluminum molecules from a can produced in the Molson factory next door, or from any other time and place. 😍🌀I’ve described this concept by creating a gradient of cans, where each can borrows a bit of colour from each of the ones beside it, suggesting a pattern of shared aluminum molecules stretching from the past into the future. On the second wall, two giant cans hold glimpses of our future: a “ship in a bottle” (though here it’s a can 👽), a metaphor for an uncertain destination at the mercy of climate change’s hostile tides; and a bright green can hosting a thorny, scrappy plant, suggesting a tentative hope. So much of our current relationship with the environment is increasingly unstable, and even our best “green” intentions serve as a bandaid solution at best. However! Aluminum recycling is a tiny beacon in a largely broken industry. So, keep recycling those cans!
SO MUCH LOVE to the Rust Magic crew. Anna and Trev are doing such important cultural work in this city, and we are extremely fortunate to have them, Edmonton! Do yourself a favour and check out the LITERAL DOZENS of murals they have helped to produce over the last few years. 💙A million thanks to everyone who gave up a bit of time to help me fill in big flat areas and small cracks between bricks on this massive wall! I couldn’t have done it without you: Alicia Chung, Vikki Wiercinski, Nathan Panousis, Steven Teeuwsen, Vignettes YEG, and Sharon!