2020 Mural: Upstream

The summer of 2020 was the first year that visual arts lecturer David Doody taught a fourth-year painting class, leading the students through the many steps necessary to plan, pitch and deliver a public mural.

Eighteen students worked to create a full-scale permanent public mural in the heart of Kelowna’s Cultural District. Over the course of the five-week class in July and August of 2020, the students met and worked collaboratively to paint a colourful two-storey mural adjacent to the CTQ Consultants building on St. Paul Street.

This mural, entitled Upstream, depicts a larger-than-life multicolored salmon swimming upstream in front of a canary yellow Archimedes screw pump. The composition of this mural was designed by artist and UBCO Lecturer David Doody, to highlight and illustrate CTQ’s Harrison Hot Springs screw-pump project. If you stand back, you can see the Archimedes screw pump (dating back to 250 BC) in the background behind the spectacular salmon. This project depicts an actual project that CTQ completed for the Village of Harrison Hot Springs. The iconic canary yellow screw pump was designed by CTQ to protect the Village from annual flooding. The design of this screw pump was engineered to specifically reduce the salmon mortality rate down to zero and to support this valuable and sensitive fish habitat.

Support for this project was made possible with the generous donations from Sunbelt Rentals, CTQ Consultants Ltd., Opus Framing and Art Supplies and Fresh West Official.

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