This man will be handing out free 'gifts' downtown this weekend

When Patrick Lundeen was a kid, he wanted to be an astronaut.

But, after watching the movie ‘The Right Stuff’, and seeing the medical tests required – including needles – Lundeen’s passion quickly shifted.

“I thought, I don’t want to do that if you have to get needles,” he told Kelowna10. “I just switched to art right after that.”

And it’s paid off, as Lundeen is now the 2022 Artist in Residence for the City of Kelowna. Prospective artists had to pitch a project that would engage and address the topic of social inclusion.

Lundeen’s self-described ‘bad’ art and music promises to do just that.

“I call it bad because I like stuff that is unschooled or untrained,” he said. “And I like it because I think sometimes there’s a real freshness or honesty to it.”

Kelowna10 spoke with Lundeen in his home studio where he records much of his music and displays some of his past work on the walls. It stores miscellaneous items from previous exhibits and is a patchworked playground of controlled chaos; like a mannequin’s arm laying next to a trumpet.

Or a table covered neatly with old sound mixers.

Lundeen said he enjoys making art out of ‘junk’ and items he finds discarded.

In 2019, the Rotary Centre for the Arts hosted his ‘noise farm’ gallery containing various peculiar looking items, including a sculpture with chicken head swinging its arms, slapping a cymbal.

In November, at the Kelowna Art Gallery, Lundeen will have his 20th ever solo exhibition over 20 years.

When not tinkering in his studio, he teaches art at UBCO in the faculty of creative and critical studies.

“My inspiration comes from day to day and existing in the world,” Lundeen said. “And kind of like a strange feeling of finding the world to be a such a beautiful and wonderful place but then also such a scary and horrible place at the same time. I’m interested in where those things interact and meet.”

Much of his art can be described as ‘quirky’. He said he likes to interject his humour into his work and found early inspiration growing up reading Mad Magazine.

As the 2022 Artist in Residence, he was given a grant of $12,000 by the city for a public art project. The one he proposed for the prestigious title is called the Happy Day Free Gift Truck.

Every Saturday starting Oct. 15, to late November, Lundeen plans to park a decorated vehicle in Rotary Commons filled with various gifts to give to the public for free.

Part of the grant money and other sponsorships will allow him to give out t-shirts, mood rings provided by another local artist, food, music, and more.

Tasked with making social inclusion a part of his public art, and wanting to tackle income disparity, Lundeen hopes people from all walks of life come to his truck.

“I thought this would be a funny way of bridging those gaps. I like the idea that [these gifts] could be available to everybody … and that somehow this truck could bridge those people together so they could meet and maybe make Kelowna just feel a little more inclusive and more of a community.”