NOTL's Christmas parade button designed by artist Gail Kerr

This year’s Christmas Parade button, sold to provide financial support for the annual event, was designed by Gail Kerr, a local artist who is an active volunteer for the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre.

Pumphouse artists are traditionally asked to submit a design to the parade button committee, and this year hers was chosen.

The button is an adaptation of her fun, colourful and whimsical Nutcracker painting on display at the arts centre, in a style that is a departure for her.

She describes it as pop art from the ’50s and ’60s, a movement inspired by popular and commercial culture. Two of the most famous examples, she says, are artist Andy Warhol’s paintings of Marilyn Monroe and the Campbell’s Soup can. Pop art, she explains, took everyday images and simplified them, often with bold splashes of colour.

Her typical style is impressionist or realist paintings, says Kerr, but for the button, which supports such a fun community event, she thought it would be fitting to create something in a style that would be both fun and representative of that venue.

She started by going on a shopping trip and purchasing two Nutcrackers 16 inches tall, she explained, and then painting the one she decided she liked best. That framed artwork is now on display and for sale at the Pumphouse until Dec. 10, as part of the members’ winter exhibition.

The design then had to be somewhat cropped for the button, to fit the shape and size of it, but she has also had the full watercolour image printed as greeting cards, which are for sale at the Pumphouse and at The Shawp, the Shaw Festival retail store.

A portion of the sales, she says, will be divided between the Shaw and the Pumphouse, “both causes that are dear to my heart.”

She has been affiliated with the Pumphouse since she came to Niagara-on-the-Lake about eight years ago, including a stint as manager when director Rima Boles was on maternity leave, and helping with renovations to the building through her experience as an interior designer, which involved supervising contractors.

Pumphouse programs, she says, are intended to reach out to the community, including children and seniors, “making art and learning about art available to everybody.”

“There is a little bit of an artist in everyone,” she continues. “Everybody has art in them that they can express, through many different ways.”

This is what the Pumphouse promotes, Kerr says, by providing “a platform for everyone to get involved with the visual arts, creating art, appreciating art and celebrating art.”