PLACEMAKER PROGRAM
Performance art and felted pebbles along the river bank are part of the city’s Placemaker public art program.
The rocks under our feet connect us to the ancient earth, and to some unknowable future where they will still exist.
Artist Heike Fink of Prud’homme hopes the felted-wool pebble art project she and others will create this summer beside the river in Saskatoon will get people thinking about those connections.
Fink’s “Like a Rolling Stone — Be Part of Art” project will invite public participation at four outdoor workshops where passersby will learn felting techniques to make fist-sized pebbles that will be placed amid the rocks near River Landing in the fall.
It’s one of seven artworks chosen for the City of Saskatoon’s Placemaker public art project, announced Friday.
The works will be installed in, performed in or created in public.
Some will be brief, lasting only for the duration of their performance, such as Mark Prier’s “Der Volgel-händler,” a two-week-long performance with a busker organ and birdseed broadcaster that will occur in various locations downtown.
Some will last through a season, such as Monique Martin’s “We Are All Linked” installation of interlocked clay hexagons covered in beeswax, hanging in trees throughout the city.
Most will remain for up to three years, including Josh Jacobson’s spray-painted mural, “The Jam,” on Broadway Avenue or Edmonton artist Heather Shillinglaw’s “Sweet Grass Sway” flag installation at the top of the University Bridge.
Shillinglaw said she’s excited about the prospect of creating art for people to encounter by chance.
“That reach into the community, that’s a very important facet of making art because you want as many people to see the work and experience it as much as possible,” she said.
She is pleased her work, with its sweetgrass motif and its 12 flagpoles installed in the looping infinity symbol used on the Metis unity flag, will resonate with the city’s aboriginal people.
“It’s very important to have a public art program in a city,” said Tarin Hughes, director of the AKA artistrun gallery.
“Given the recent controversy that’s come up with taxpayer money being spent on public art installations, I think it’s interesting that Saskatoon has these temporary placements,” Hughes said.
“IT’S AN UNPLANNED EXPERIENCE THAT INTERJECTS ITSELF WITHIN YOUR DAY OR YOUR THOUGHTS.” TARIN HUGHES, DIRECTOR OF THE AKA ARTIST-RUN GALLERY
The project provides artists with an opportunity to be part of a rotating exhibition in the public sphere and for people to interact with art that is different from permanent monuments, she said.
Instead, many artists benefit from having their work displayed in public rather than secluded in galleries and people get to interact with a changing array of works.
“You can just walk up on it. It’s an unplanned experience that interjects itself within your day or your thoughts,” Hughes said.
“There’s something really interesting about the subconscious impact public installations have.”
Hughes is also pleased that the works, created by local and national artists, include various modes.
“I think it’s exciting that there is a possibility to incorporate performance. That kind of diversity and support for a variety of artistic practice is exciting. There are a lot of challenges to artists that work in different fields.”
The works will be installed between June and December.
Saskatoon artists Les Potter and Alicia Popoff will install ‘Dapplers,’ two painted steel and cement sculptures, on 20th Street West.
Adrian Bica of Markham, Ont., will install a head sculpture made of polystyrene panels mounted to a steel frame and surrounded by plantings on College Drive. He’ll have help from Dimitri Karopoulos and Sebastian Lubcynski.