DESIGNER CREATES TALL ART FOR THE HIGH ARCTIC
Maple leaf sculpture’s shimmering pipes are meant to resemble the northern lights
Edmonton designer Wei Yew is believed to have created one of the world’s largest sculptures north of the Arctic Circle.
It’s a 5½-metre maple leaf sculpture just placed outside the new $250-million Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.
“I wanted to reflect the culture of the people there with a polar iconic structure,” said Yew, who has designed everything from Calgary’s 1988 Winter Olympics arts festival to the Moriyama Royal Architectural Institute of Canada international prize award.
“Designing the polar structure was one of my most challenging projects. I had to factor in the wind, snow and lighting.”
Cambridge Bay is the largest stop for passenger and research vessels traversing the Northwest Passage. It’s also a disputed area that Canada claims as “internal waters,” while other nations say they are either territorial waters or international waters.
Yew says friend Jaan Krusberg, with whom he had previously worked with at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, asked him to help develop the identity of the new federal agency, Polar Knowledge Canada.
“Jaan designed the wayfinding signage for (the research station),” Yew says. “The station was part of the 2007 federal budget, which aimed to establish a home base in the North that otherwise lacked research infrastructure while also identifying Canada’s sovereignty.”
Yew decided copper was the perfect medium for his Cambridge Bay maple leaf sculpture because it perfectly reflects local heritage of the hamlet, also known as Iqaluktuuttiaq.
“Europeans had given locals the name Copper Inuit when they discovered they used local copper to make tools,” said Yew.
“The sculpture is made of aluminum pipes powder-coated in three copper tones. These shimmering pipes resemble the well-known phenomena, the northern lights.”
Wei had wanted to position holes in four cardinal compass points in respective tubes.
“The locals would recognize a certain sound from the north, south, east or west wind,” he said. “They might say, ‘Ah, that’s the north wind blowing’! Later, I thought it might be a great novelty for a month or so, but after that the noises might be unbearable.”
There was a rush to install the sculpture before winter closes in. Yew has just returned from the North.
“None of my friends in the arts know of any sculpture closer to the North Pole,” he says. “And Russian pilots will instantly know they are over Canada when they spot the maple leaf.”
BEST CANADIAN PIZZAIOLO
St. Albert’s Matteo Cesarotto beat out 30 fellow pizzaiolo at the Canadian Pizza Show in Mississauga, Ont., last week to be crowned top Canadian pizza maker of the year.
“In the final bake-off, I found myself facing my old friend Giuseppe Cortinovis from Vancouver,” said Cesarotto, who works in the Buco Pizzeria and Vino Bar on Bellerose Drive.
But his boar pizza, featuring wild boar sausage and portobello mushrooms, won the day.
The friends both won trips to Las Vegas to compete in the 2018 International Pizza Challenge at Pizza Expo.
The Sorrentino’s Group, which owns the Buco restaurant, says a similar restaurant will be launched in Windermere in January and another in downtown’s Epcor Tower in February.
FASHION WITH COMPASSION
More than 650 people, mainly women, attended the Fashion with Compassion lunch or the nighttime gala at the Edmonton Conference Centre on Friday.
They netted some $200,000 to assist out-of-town women to stay at Sorrentino’s Compassion House while they receive care at the Cross Cancer Institute.
The new initiative announced was a “We Can Weekend,” a conference-style weekend for women to discuss issues associated with survivorship.
“Mental health is something we often don’t consider when dealing with cancer survivors,” said Melissa Kraft, Compassion House Foundation executive director.
“But we need to do more to help survivors on their continuing journey. Women getting together can often reassure others, telling them there is a new normal.”
Kraft says retreats have been held previously and there is great support for the planned weekend, to be held at the airport Renaissance Hotel in March.
Syncrude CEO Mark Ward, a Compassion House board member whose company has helped sponsor the gala for 15 years, told the crowd it was because of the work the foundation does that his company has been and will be there “every step of the way.”
Ward, who announced his retirement last week and will return home to Texas after more than 40 years in the oil and gas industry, noted it was only last year that 80,000 people fled Fort McMurray to escape the wildfire.
“More than half of our Syncrude employees, about 2,500 people, along with their family members, found safe haven here in Edmonton,” he said. “I was one of them.
“I want you all to know just how much we appreciate the many kindnesses that were extended to Fort McMurray residents during that very stressful and difficult period.
“Countless residents opened up their hearts and homes for those needing a place to stay, your local food bank shared its shelves with evacuees and places like Ronald McDonald House found extra room for families who not only had to deal with the fire, but still needed medical treatment for serious illness.”
Ward said he is going home having “seen and enjoyed the sense of community and generous spirit of northern Albertans.”