I'm designing and painting a bus for Carole Ferrari at The Local Cafe (a food/catering business in Toronto). Above is one of the preliminary sketches I made while trying to work out what would look good in terms of colour scheme and composition. The images I swapped onto the bus mock-up above are from my work for The Dominion News Cooperative and served as a preliminary trial in the visioning process. After many brainstorming sessions with Carole about the nature of her business and her philosophy about food, it became clear the murals would connect her business with illustrations of food production and eating. The murals were commissioned for the exterior of a former mini school bus; Carole uses this custom-fitted vehicle as a roving kitchen and street food cookery.

One of the themes that emerged early on in the visioning process was Carole's commitment to following the footsteps of her culinary heros by making choices that support fair wages in the agriculture industry. Although Carole is a cook and her product is ready to eat, she spends a lot of time thinking about her raw materials. Carole's philosophy on food production had two sides. On the one hand, Carole's idealism motivated her to support small Ontario farmers who raise organic food outside the mass market system. On the other hand, she wished to educate the public about the conventional food system to which those farms offer an alternative. Much of the food we eat in Canada is raised on large industrial style farms, either here or abroad. In North America many farms employ seasonal migrant labourers who, as foreigners in another country, may have little control over their labour and see disproportionately small profit from the work they do.

The first mural celebrates labourers whose work is made invisible and often forgotten once the food they produce makes its appearance at our table. We took inspiration from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers whose landmark campaign forced major North American fast food companies to increase the price they pay for tomatoes.

Below is a photo of the tomato pickers mural, in progress.

On the opposite side of the bus we decided to depict a scene derived from how Carole and I connected to our food, both philosophically or literally. The background farm buildings and animals were derived from sketches I made at Manorun farm in Copetown, Ontario. The foreground figures are inspired by Carole's food production "hall of fame".