#PercentforArt

[yegarts]

Meet the Artists: Butler Memorial Park

Artists Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett. Photo supplied. 

In late 2019, the EAC received submissions of interest from artists across Canada in response to a call to artists for Butler Memorial Park. This opportunity comes as a result of the redevelopment and enhancement of the area. The improvement of the park space is intended contribute to the continuing revitalization of Jasper Place and surrounding area while supporting goals of safety, connections, and community building. The new design will also maintain the historical context of the park’s origins and integrate with the current plans for improving the adjacent Jasper Place Transit Centre.    

Calgary-based artists Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett have been selected for the project by a committee of artists, City staff and community members. Brown and Garrett have already begun their work, a period of research and engagement prior to creating their concept. This focused time to learn and connect represents a shift in the EAC’s approach to public art calls.

“We’re adjusting our process to allow the artists time to be immersed in the project before they generate a concept,” says David Turnbull, Director of Public Art for the EAC. “In the past, artists have done a lot of the creative work just to apply to a call. This approach invests in the artists’ time and will lead to work that is site-based and grounded in the community.”

Photos (top): CARBON COPY by Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett; (bottom): CLOUD at Nuit Blanche Calgary. Photo: Doug Wong.

For Butler Park, the vision is to have artwork that is discoverable and playful, an obvious strength of Brown and Garrett’s. Their project in Edmonton’s Brewery District, CARBON COPY, was voted People’s Choice at the Edmonton Urban Design Awards in 2019, with jurors noting their innovative and playful approach.

“We're excited to be developing a new public artwork for Butler Memorial Park,” says Brown. “As the neighbourhood changes, this public park takes on a more important role as a place between things: between transit lines, walking routes, neighbourhoods, homes, and destinations.”

Garrett notes that this time of increased isolation during the pandemic also shaped their process. “We've continued to think about the importance of public space to connection and community identity.”

“The new design of the Park will help make it a better place for resting, reflecting, waiting, playing, and being,” Brown adds. “We look forward to learning more about West Jasper Place as we continue developing a public artwork for your community.”

For updates about this project, and to learn more about the City of Edmonton’s Public Art Collection, visit edmontonpublicart.ca.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett (Calgary, Canada) work with diverse mediums and materials, ranging from artificial light to re-appropriated urban debris, often resulting in public sculptures and installations.

Beckoning viewers with interactive contexts and novel materials, their projects invite strangers to share in experiential moments, prompting collaborative viewership. Using mass-produced objects as a reference to cities as an immeasurable quantity of materials, people, and situations, Caitlind & Wayne evoke the possibility of renewed understanding through a critical shift in perspective. Beautiful, subversive, playful, and radically inclusive, their work emphasizes transformation above all else.

Their collaborative artworks have appeared at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), Japan Alps Art Festival (Omachi, Japan), Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, USA), Pera Museum (Istanbul, Turkey), the National Arts Centre (Ottawa, Canada), and others. In 2013, CLOUD was short-listed for an Innovation by Design Award by Fast Company.

This blog post expands on a story featured in the Stony Plain Road Area Newsletter. 

[pencilcasedates]

Olafur Eliasson spoke about his work and then some of us went with him to check out his installation. I have been to his exhibition in Seoul and from “experiencing” Rainbow Assembly, I had been wondering if I would ever get to see or engage with any of his other works. Seeing this work tonight, I could imagine what it was like for the viewers of his Ice Car installation (where viewers had to enter a freezing container, and “endure” his art). It was a particularly cold night, and the coldness stopped me (and many others) from looking at the work longer. We retreated into the nano building and chatted while sipping on freeflow hot chocolate. (This challenge of the “cold physical encounter vs the visual encounter”, was probably not intentional in this particular piece) It was interesting to watch people’s behaviour and movement - looking up and slowly navigating the space through the reflections. It was magical to share a space with Olafur Eliasson, under his own work. #olafureliasson #northwestpassage #mit #mitList #percentforart magical event organised by MIT List Art Center

[mtaartsdesign]

As 2016 comes to a close, we look back at the Percent for Art projects MTA Arts & Design installed this year and celebrate the artists and their mosaic, metal and glass fabricators who made the work! Details of artwork from left to right, clockwise:

Dan Funderburgh, Linda Ganjian, Corinne Ulmann, Mia Pearlman,Cara Lynch.

To read more about each project, visit our website! mta.info/art

[percentforartnyc-blog]

In honor of #VeteransDay, here is Amy Cheng's 2002 Percent for Art commission "Seen through the Layers of Time" in the auditorium of PS 58 in Maspeth, Queens. Also known as the "School of Heroes," PS 58 is dedicated to the men and women who gave their lives in 9/11 related emergency services. Cheng's murals pay homage to those workers as well as to those who served the nation portrayed in a timeline of American history including the American Revolution, Civil War, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement. Learn more: http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcla/html/panyc/chenga.shtml #ThankYouVeterans

[thegraymarket-blog]

Popularity Contest

Rendering of Ohad Meromi, “The Sunbather.” Image credit: Forward.

Earlier this week, DNA Info reported that New York’s City Council had approved a bill that would strengthen the community review hurdle in Gotham’s public art commission process. And ironically, this populist move risks replicating the same conditions that have been undermining visual innovation in blue chip galleries and elite art fair booths for the past several years.

Sponsored by Long Island City councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, the new legislation would apply only to works originating from the Percent for Art initiative--a program mandating that one percent of the budget for "eligible City-funded construction projects be spent on [site-specific] artwork for City facilities.” But I now fear for those projects like I fear for teenagers learning to drive on the lunatic freeways of Los Angeles.

For clarity’s sake, I should stress that the Percent for Art process already demands a review by the community board appropriate to the new artwork���s intended destination. Van Bramer’s contribution--assuming NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio signs it into law--simply beefs up the existing covenant. 

The bill would require that A) the public be formally notified about Percent for Art’s upcoming plans, B) the community board hearings be opened to the public, and C) said hearings be announced in the community at least two weeks in advance. So, to steal a phrase I’ve used in my ad world freelancing many times, we’re talking about an evolution here, not a revolution.

Still, this strikes me as an instance where siphoning power from the few to the many seems like more of a risk than a reward. The bill was allegedly spawned in response to the furor over Brooklyn-based sculptor Ohad Meromi’s The Sunbather, which is currently slated for installation on Jackson Avenue in 2016. As Sarah Cascone of artnet news noted, commenters have already taunted Meromi’s piece by comparing it to “Gumby’s grandmother” and a heap of “pink poop.” And here the industry cries out that good art criticism is dead...

Contemporary public art pieces tend to meet this type of mockery no matter what their form or venue. As I wrote about in the Gray Market newsletter a couple of weeks ago, New Yorkers attacked Teresita Fernández’s Fata Morgana, a freshly unveiled cloud bank of golden, mirrored desks at Madison Square Park, for causing too much noise during installation and blocking out the view of too many trees once complete. A similar story is playing out in Sacramento surrounding Jeff Koons’s latest Coloring Book sculpture, destined for the city’s forthcoming public plaza despite the uproar. And let’s not forget the most infamous Big Apple backlash against a piece of public art: Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, the monumental sculpture removed from its eight-year home in Manhattan’s Foley Federal Plaza in 1989 and left to rust in a Maryland warehouse forevermore due to public outcry and subsequent litigation.

What does all this have to do with the art market? Ask a healthy cross-section of art worlders about the biggest disappointments snaking their way through the industry’s soil during our current sales surge, and you’re likely to hear about the proliferation of “zombie formalism” or, more broadly, “art-fair art.” Work that’s pleasingly decorative and instantly consumable, but ultimately hollow. All icing, no cake. The summer action movies of visual culture.

As I argued in the piece linked just above, one of the main forces driving this phenomenon is the accelerated pace of sales in today’s art market. With more high and ultra-high net worth individuals than ever competing for pieces on the ‘buy’ side, and with more galleries than ever trying to build empires on the ‘sell’ side, few of the players involved have the time to dig beneath the surface of the pieces in front of them. They need either an established brand so undeniable or an exterior layer so graphically appealing that they can be comfortable saying ‘yes’ before their nearest competitor does.

Van Bramer’s bill effectively creates the same incentives for future Percent for Art proposals. Having to win over a public that’s more likely to react on sight than reflect at length means that savvy artists will tailor their concepts to prioritize surface over substance--in other words, to become the permanent, public embodiments of “art-fair art.” After all, landing a commission of this scale is a huge boost to any artist’s career. And as we know, there’s no more lucrative time than now to raise your profile in the fine art game. The ends justify the creative concessions made to grab them. 

But innovation suffers. Henry Ford once famously said that if he had polled his customers about what they wanted before he introduced them to the Model T, they would have asked for a faster horse. Similarly, Arthur Schopenhauer once declared that “talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.” Though it’s only a small blow, Van Bramer’s legislation strikes at the kneecaps of genius--and in the process, risks limiting New Yorkers to nothing greater than shiny, graphical, art-fair-level talent. They may have a greater voice in the process, but I wonder how much art history will be hurt by their statements.  

COMMENTS:

Twitter: @TFS3000

Facebook: The Gray Market

Newsletter: Sign up here.

[artspracticum]

Week 8 - August 01, 2014  The last day of NYAP began with a trip to artist B. Wurtz's studio. B. Wurtz talked about his experiences at Cal Arts with Baldessari, his collections of everyday objects, and the many sculptures found throughout his home.  After, students met with Director of Percent for Art, Sara Reisman. Reisman shared some of her favorite projects and talked about her experiences collaborating with artists.

In the evening, NYAP had their final farewell taco dinner at Prospect Park. 

[yegarts]

Myth, metadata, and community: Creating public art for Capilano Library

Untitled (Capilano Schema) by Sergio Serrano and Alexander Stewart. Photo by provided by the artists. 

“Libraries are a radical concept,” say Edmonton artists Sergio Serrano and Alexander Stewart. Caught during the final stages of fabrication for their artwork for Capilano Library, the duo dove into a spirited discussion of their project, Untitled (Capilano Schema), which connects people, data, technology, and visual art to tell a nuanced story of the Capilano community. The piece is being installed over the coming weeks, suspending abstract objects sourced from the communities surrounding the library, in the facility’s community room and common area.

“This idea of libraries as radical comes from the current global conversation about access to information and democratized tools,” says Alexander Stewart. “Libraries are also going through a technological shift, becoming maker spaces. So, anyone can go in and access any type of information or tool.”

Capilano community members were invited to bring valued objects to workshops facilitated by the artists who collected data about each item. In keeping with the maker space concept, the artists then worked with participants to create 3D scans of their object using readily available technology.

In the end, Serrano & Stewart scanned about 200 objects or pieces of data. That number shrank to +/- 14 as they worked to determine which pieces would be most representative of themes, and which would become part of the final artwork. To map connections and stories, the artists organized the words of the community into spreadsheets, then fed them through a Markov machine learning system, which presented the data back in a new form. The artists then used that data to create an image map connecting the objects through commonalities of theme, materiality, sentiment, and story.

“There’s the commonality of people going to Disneyland or even the Bahamas and bringing home a souvenir,” explains Stewart. “That became representative of a time and place, a set of values linked with connection to family as well as geography.”

“We also tried to balance the different ways people represent sentiment,” continues Serrano. “You have mass-produced objects that are deeply sentimental to the owner alongside unique objects that were knitted by hand or made by a child in an art class. We found exciting connections and contrasts in the data we pulled out to resolve the final set of objects.”

Working representationally meant that the artists weren't concerned with creating minutely accurate models of the objects.

Serrano and Stewart with the model of a community member’s cowboy hat. Photo by EAC. 

“The cowboy hat is interesting because it represents a specific object story from the library itself,” continues Stewart. “Essentially the Library became a person with a story. There’s a patron who is there every day and is quite a tall man who always wears a cowboy hat, so you can see him as he walks through the stacks with this hat that bobs over the books. One of the librarians was talking about the project and told him he had to participate. He said he didn’t know what to bring so they said, ‘You should just scan your hat!’ The object is iconic, but also very specific.”

The artwork’s themes and meaning are not necessarily dependent upon the physical objects say Serrano and Stewart, because the artwork’s story lies within the initial community-based concept and the process that generated the final form.

[yegarts]

Planting new roots with Platanos

(Platanos by Michelle Campos Castillo, at the Belvedere Transit Centre. Photo: EAC)  

There are many ways to find a way home - Dorothy had ruby slippers, Edmonton artist Michelle Campos Castillo has green plantains. An homage to her cultural heritage and the many communities that call north east Edmonton home, Platanos now graces the newly opened Belvedere station.

“Food is important to our well-being. Outside of the necessity of eating, it is a reminder of ‘home’ or where we come from. It’s something I turn to when I need to be grounded and remember who I am.”

Born in El Salvador, Campos Castillo and her family arrived in the early 1990s, and Edmonton’s north end quickly became home for the youngster. She picked up English quickly while eagerly absorbing new experiences, places, friends, and cultural mores. “Looking back, I was so young. The rest of my family had a better sense of who they were. They were always able to hold on to parts of the culture whereas I was floating around for a long time in terms of who I was and who I wanted to be.”

An integral part of the immigrant experience, food is one of the first things sought out in a new place as part of maintaining identity, but as a community becomes more diverse, the need to substitute ingredients becomes less. “Food was a huge adjustment and a source of shame because mine didn’t look like the perfect cut up little sandwiches everyone else had. My mum would send me to school with beans and plantains or rice and I just wanted a meatloaf sandwich.”

Campos Castillo says her success at integrating into “Canadian” culture had a price – in her early twenties, she was disconnected, alone, and just eating ‘random things.” A phone call with her mother changed that. “She told me to cook a pot of beans. I was a bit broke and beans are super cheap. I don’t know what it was – the experience of cooking something I grew up with or a DNA thing, but [the beans] awakened memories and feelings that brought a sense of comfort to my body; it’s comfort food that is meant to nourish on so many levels.”

The green banana-like food is part of many cuisines – African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American. “You notice the overlap of cultures and their markers more, which is why I chose the plantain as my inspiration. We’re all living outside our home regions and it’s so beautiful how these things bring us together. I wanted to honour that.”

Creating Platanos was a homecoming she says, “Part of my journey of learning how to live between cultures is finding my way back to those cultural markers that I ignored for the sake of surviving. There’s a big cultural push with people younger than me who are honouring their cities and the things they grew up with. I am inspired by that pride because for so long I did not carry that with me. Platanos is part of paying homage to that.”

(Platanos by Michelle Campos Castillo. Photo: EAC)

[yegarts]

#YEGPublicArt :: New for 2019

(A detail of Spring is Sprung the Grass is Riz by Karen Klassen & Erin Pankratz at Dermott Park)

As 2019 settles into a groove, the Edmonton Arts Council public art and conservation departments are gearing up for a new round of installations, revelations, and conservation. This year, we anticipate adding 11 new public artworks to the City of Edmonton Public Art Collection. Of that number, five are by Edmonton-based artists, two by Albertans, two by Canadian artists, and two are international projects. Reflecting the complex nature of construction schedules, a couple won’t be visible to the public until their respective facilities open in 2020. EAC Conservation continues to work on the mammoth Norman Yates mural restoration project and plans to be out and about cleaning and restoring Edmonton’s sculptures and murals again this spring.

Keep your eyes open for some exciting temporary projects as well. Ground Proof will scatter works by local artists throughout neighbourhoods around town and #YEGCanvas will return in a new, more mobile format.

To be revealed

Spring is Sprung, the Grass is Riz (I Wonder where the Birdie is?) – Karen Klassen & Erin Pankratz, (Edmonton), Dermott Park

Ablaze with colour and texture, this intricate ceramic tile mosaic features exotic birds concealed within its fantastical flowers. Created by Edmonton mosaicists Karen Klassen and Erin Pankratz, the artwork adorns an undulating concrete wall at the new park entrance. It will be revealed later this year when Dermott Park reopens.

(Rendering of Animal Family at the Valley Zoo)

Animal Family – Leu/Webb, (Canada), Nature’s Wild Backyard, Edmonton Valley Zoo

The new family-friendly Urban Barn at the city’s beloved zoo will offer kids and families new ways to interact with the animals living there. To further animate the experience, Toronto artists Christine Leu and Paul Webb created Animal Family, an interactive, brightly coloured “flipbook” of farm animals. The movable panels will allow kids to make tails wag, and heads move. You can play with Animal Family later in 2019 when the facility opens to the public.

New Installs

(Artist Rendering of Platanos at Belvedere Transit Centre)

Platanos (Plantains) – Karen Michelle Campos Castillo (Edmonton),  Belvedere Transit Centre

Nothing says “home” quite like the food we grew up eating. To celebrate the diverse, multi-ethnic communities that call Edmonton’s north end home, local artist Karen Michelle Campos Castillo will suspend glistening green bunches of plantains within the transit centre waiting area. The plantain is a staple food for many populations within Asia, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. Campos Castillo grew up in Edmonton’s Belvedere neighbourhood after her family relocated from El Salvador more than 20 years ago. Her mother’s cooking of traditional Salvadorean fare offset her feelings of homesickness and culture shock.

(Artist Rendering of Agent Crystalline at EPS Northwest)

Agent Crystalline - Marc Fornes & THEVERYMANY (International) Edmonton Northwest Police Campu

From the artist collective that brought us Vaulted Willow comes an intriguing angular matrix. Agent Crystalline is an urban arch which will act as a beacon for the Edmonton Police Service’s Northwest facility.

(Artist concept drawing of Day Map / Night Map for Heritage Valley Park & Ride)

Day Map / Night Map – Jill Stanton (Edmonton), Heritage Valley Park & Ride

Two painted murals by Edmonton muralist Jill Stanton will splash colour along the walls of each side of the transit centre building. They will feature highly detailed, colourful maps of a fictional city straddling a river.

(Artist concept drawing for Neon Prairie)

Neon Prairie – Victoria Wiercinski, (Edmonton), Jasper Place Leisure Centre

This fall, swimmers at the newly renovated leisure centre, will have a new mural to enjoy during their morning laps. The artist was inspired by the idea that the pool is a year-round lake and so created a mural concept that would provide pool users with a sense of the sky. The brightly patterned modern drawing of prairie skyscapes will be hand painted on panels. The artwork design is determined by imagery derived through a community workshop that took place in 2016.

(Sculpture in exhibition of Landbuoys series - photo courtesy of Tony Bloom)

Silver Seed – Tony Bloom (Alberta), Jasper Place Bowl & Grandstand Silver Seed is part of Canmore artist Tony Bloom’s Landbuoy series. The sculpture is a 1.5 metre hemisphere with a 20 cm slice rotated up into a fin or sail. The Landbuoy series explores the idea of signifiers in our midst, such as erratics—geologic artifacts left behind by retreating glaciers. Rather than being organic in nature, the Landbuoys point to an intelligent hand, and ask, but do not answer, how these structures got there.

(Artist Rendering of one of the mountain landscapes in 53°30’N)

53°30’N – Thorsten Goldberg (International), Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage

Five mountain landscape will begin to sparkle from the roof of the in-progress Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage later this year. 53°30’N is a collection of topo­graphic models from locations sitting on the same latitude (53°) as Edmonton.

The models depict locations in five geographic areas: Mount Chown (Alberta), the crater of Mount Okmok (Umnak Island in the Aleutians), Zhupanovsky Crater (Kamchatka, Russia), an unnamed landscape near Dacaodianzi, Heilongjiang Sheng (China) and Mweelrea (Connaught, Ireland). The artistic concept is inspired by what the artist calls the “globe game”- placing your finger on a specific location and rotating the globe to see what other locations lie along a specific latitude.

Kathleen Andrews Portrait -  Daphne Cote (Edmonton), Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage

Kathleen Andrews was Edmonton’s first female bus driver. Originally from England, she was a long-time ETS employee who filled several positions with the organization. Daphne Cote’s portrait draws on photographs and remembrances of this dynamic, pioneering Edmontonian.

(Fabrication image of The Dancer - courtesy of the artists)

The Dancer – Verne Busby & Bella Totino-Busby (Edmonton), Yorath House

The Dancer is a human-scale abstracted representation of a figure in motion. The sculpture is based on an ink brush drawing. The artists intend that the sculpture imparts a feeling of thought, presence, and inspiration to the viewer. Totino Busby believes that public art should challenge the viewer, spark curiosity, and heighten the human spirit.

(Concept maquette by Studio F Minus)

Untitled Kinistinâw Park Project – Studio F Minus (Canada) – Kinistinâw Park, The Quarters Downtown

This project begins by looking to the existing site of Kinistinâw Park for artifacts, symbols and icons already present in the community.

Replicas of the artifact lions, which were formerly set at the Harbin Gate, will be cast in translucent resin layers. Like an archaeological dig site, personal artifacts from the current community and the history of the site will be cast and suspended in the resin layers.

The project uses social art practices and community involvement to address the questions: “How can we preserve the history of a place and its diverse inhabitants? How can we engage the community in a meaningful way? How can we choose symbols and imagery to mark public space?”

[yegarts]

New for 2017 in #yegpublicart

As the last traces of winter trickle into Edmonton’s storm drains, the city shakes itself, and turns to thoughts of spring. It’s a time of renewal and exploration when outdoor events and markets beckon, inviting fresh eyes to view the cityscape with renewed interest.

Hot for 2017 is a baker’s dozen of intriguing silhouettes, dynamic shapes, rainbow hues, and enchanting visions. We refer, of course, to the new public art installations coming soon to a fire station, transit centre, pool, or park near you. This year’s breakdown of public artists is exciting – the 13 anticipated projects are all by Canadian artists; six based in Edmonton; one in Alberta, one Canadian Indigenous artist, and five from other parts of the country. Nine women artists are involved as lead artists or as part of artist teams.

Each artwork is inspired by its location: an abstract runner in motion evoking the spirit of Alexander Decoteau; lissome benches inspired by water currents in the North Saskatchewan River; a water jet, captured in stainless steel; contemplative and interactive sculptures utilizing boulders from the Edmonton region; a mosaic reminder to pay attention to the health of our ponds and waterways.

Read on for some highlights, and click on the links for more information.

Turbulent

Canadian Artist Jill Anholt’s Turbulent is inspired by the swirling forms and twisting, turning shapes that appear along the edges of water currents. This integrated artwork adds a sculptural layer to the new funicular (the Motorized Vehicular Access) connecting downtown with the hiking trails and amenities in the river valley. The collection of flowing benches – ribbons of blue steel – offers a playful place to rest and read, gather with friends, or simply enjoy sweeping views of the North Saskatchewan River and the Muttart Conservatory.

Esprit

When Alex Decoteau joined the Edmonton Police force in 1909, he became Canada’s first Indigenous police officer. An accomplished runner, Decoteau also won every important race in Western Canada between 1909 and 1916 and competed at the 1912 Olympics. He fell at Passchendaele in 1917 and is buried there. In keeping with his Cree ancestry, his relatives held a ceremony in 1985 to bring his spirit home to Edmonton. Canadian artist Pierre Poussin spoke with Decoteau’s great niece as he worked on Esprit. The abstract sculpture is composed of metal ribbons that intersect in fluidity, forming the silhouette of a man mid-sprint. It will stand in the new Alexander Decoteau Park downtown.

WELCA Mural

Edmonton’s Black Artifex celebrates Western craft and the longstanding presence of the Whitemud Equine Learning Centre Association in the river valley. The Centre stands on the historic site of the Keillor Farm, and continues to introduce Edmontonians of all ages to the joys of equestrian sport. Taking its inspiration from Alberta’s cattle ranching industry, the imagery of animals and nature within the mural recall motifs often found on saddles and leatherwork and is burned into the cedar exterior of the new facility.

The Big Splash

Paul Slipper and Maryanne Liu’s exuberant sculpture, The Big Splash, created for the new Pilot Sound Fire Station, explores time and movement in a bold explosion of form. Its sparkling chrome finish reflects natural and ambient lighting – pulsing red when the fire trucks flash by – as well as the viewer. The sculpture also celebrates the lifesaving power of water.

Resonant Progression

Resonant Progression is three sculptures placed along the Terwillegar Park path. They are intended to connect the viewer with the sounds around them, and provide an invitation to slow down and simply listen to the pace of nature. Royden Mills, an internationally acclaimed Edmonton sculptor, is interested in exploring the myriad meanings of place and sense. Entitled Potential, Resonant Point, and Beyond Listening, the sculptures incorporate boulders sourced from around Edmonton. The artist has imbued the sculptures with poetic/metaphoric resonance in addition to building resonant properties into each. The construction is low-tech, timeless, and low maintenance to ensure the longevity and relevance of the artwork – a place where families may joyfully play for many generations.

Ripples on a Pond

Edmonton’s newest outdoor pool will also be the country’s first “natural swim experience”; water plants and layers of gravel and sand will clean and maintain the water in much the same way as a natural slough or pond. Métis artist William Frymire is creating circular mosaics that resemble small ponds and feature three native Albertan aquatic species; the Western Painted Turtle, the Leopard Frog and the Dragonfly. They are interdependent species susceptible to human modification of the environment. Frymire’s style is postmodernist, embracing the ancient art of mosaic but offering a contemporary voice.

Veil

For the South Haven Cemetery, Calgary artists Brendan McGillicuddy & Jeffrey Riedl have proposed Veil, a large fabric-like lattice of airy line work appearing to billow from the South Haven Cemetery Service Building’s rectilinear geometry. The imagery evokes medieval Vanitas, or memento mori paintings, which reflect on mortality, the vanity of life, and transient nature of existence. Cloth, or empty clothing, is used to represent absence and loss; Veil continues this tradition.

Calder Mosaic

Community members joined artist Rebecca Bayer for a series of workshops to create patterns and colour palettes for this bright mosaic. The artwork celebrates the cultural diversity of the Calder neighbourhood and speaks to library visitors in the “universal language of pattern and colour.”

Details the remaining projects are yet to be revealed. Stay tuned for more public art news in the coming months!

Other goodies include new artworks for the Borden Park Transitory Sculpture Exhibition, as well as events, new initiatives, and calls to artists. In keeping with the spirit of spring, brush off your sandals, take the dog for a walk and capture some selfies with your favourite public artwork. We’ll share and celebrate all things tagged #yegpublicart!

[percentforartnyc-blog]

[percentforartnyc-blog]

If you encounter a Percent for Art work around the city, let us know! Take a photo and Tweet, Instagram or post it to Tumblr using #PercentforArt. We love to see public art through the eyes of the public it serves.

[percentforartnyc-blog]

At the Weeksville Heritage Center in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn sits a sculpture made entirely of repurposed pieces of car tires, a Percent for Art commission by artist Chakaia Booker. Weeksville was a free black community founded in 1838 and rediscovered in 1968 by a determined instructor from the Pratt Institute and his friend from the Metropolitan Transit Authority who helped him scout the area with his very own propeller plane. Using archival maps and other records, they found four old shingled houses that didn’t align with the surrounding street grid – remnants of one of the country’s first free black communities, an incredible piece of history hidden in the middle of bustling Brooklyn. Ms. Booker’s bold piece pays homage to this remarkable past.  

[percentforartnyc-blog]

Sarah Sze completed her Percent for Art piece Momentum and its Conservation at the Mott Haven School in the Bronx in 2010. The suspended sculpture and its shadow are located in the atrium of a complex of four separate schools.

This year, Sze we will be representing the U.S. at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Learn more about the artist and her intricate works on her website.