Oak Bay’s popular painted pianos need a winter home.
Arts laureate Barbara Adams is asking residents to consider putting a painted piano in their home to protect it from the heavy rain and wind of an Oak Bay fall, winter and spring.
Volunteer takers would house the pianos from mid-September to mid-June. Oak Bay will both deliver and then pick up the piano, Adams said.
The pop-up piano program is now six years old and has six pianos installed around Oak Bay from June to September (only five need homes). Through the first four years each painted piano was sold or given away.
Of the first 16 painted pianos, 12 went to charities around town and four are in private homes, including one on Salt Spring Island. Last year was the first year of keeping them.
“We used to sell them and gift them to charities [to sell], but it’s quite a costly way of doing things,” Adams said.
The reality is each piano is a lot of work to restore and turn into a piece of unique art, and so the plan is to make the model more sustainable.
Adams, and Oak Bay, are grateful for the 2018 ArtsAlive painted piano hosts: Rola Doudin, Sonnen Sloan, Catherine Sands-Leith, Joan Russo and Steve Tara.
The current six are hand-painted, original works by local artists Gillian Redwood, Robert Amos, Jennifer McIntyre, Christine Gollner, Sherry Tompalski and senior art students from St. Michaels University School.
They are tuned ahead of the summer and are tuned again in the summer, as well as covered, and locked, each night while outside. To host a painted piano this winter email Adams at barbaraadams@shaw.ca.
READ MORE: Painted pianos on tour in Oak Bay