NEW ART ON THE STREETS
Peter Simpson looks at new crop of public art
There’s a bumper crop in public art in Ottawa this summer, as at least a half-dozen new installations have popped up on sidewalks or on campus or beneath the highway.
The smallest of the new projects is perhaps the most permanent, and it relates to another work in Gatineau. The new project is titled Locavore, and it’s a bronze sculpture by Mary Anne Barkhouse at Carleton University.
The Gatineau work, titled namaxsala, is also by Barkhouse, and was installed in 2013 outside the Canadian Museum of History. Each is an evocation of the other.
The earlier work is a life-sized bronze wolf sitting in a 16-foot copper canoe, and forever floating in a shallow pool outside the Gatineau museum. The serene scene speaks to Barkhouse’s Kwakwaka’wakw heritage in the Pacific Islands of British Columbia.
What could be another chapter in the same narrative will be unveiled Sept. 1 on the grassy quad at the centre of Carleton’s campus.
Locavore has its own type of serenity, or at least of détente. A snowshoe hare sits calmly atop a column of four feet or so and looks down upon a hungry coyote, which, in turn, stands on stones that are set with etchings of blueberry, clover and other things that you’d find on menus in restaurants that are frequented by hares.
Locavore is a standoff, and while both hare and coyote are alert, neither seems particularly agitated, as if the conflict has settled into if not peace, then at least reprieve.
Barkhouse sets the scene in the Boreal forest by giving a bark-like finish to her column. Four tiny owls, all seeing and ever wise, perch atop the column as if holding up the capital and the hare that sits upon it. All things must establish a balance, the owls seem to say, even predator and prey.
Locavore was purchased by the university with support from Carleton president Roseann O’Reilly Runte, the arts and social sciences faculty and the Canada Council for the Arts, and it was commissioned by Corinna Ghaznavi.
Locavore has its own type of serenity, or at least of détente. A snowshoe hare sits calmly atop a column of four feet or so and looks down upon a hungry coyote.
The city’s public art program is responsible for a new installation that’s spread along a kilometre-plus stretch of Rideau Street, titled Cube, Lattice, Sphere, Wave. Westport artist Mark Thompson’s four glass boxes are filled with strips of glass that emit shifting shapes and colours. “At Waller Street, the energy of downtown glows red in Cube,” says a news release. “Further east, in front of the Rideau branch of the Ottawa Public Library, many colours of Lattice represent interconnected knowledge. The values of community, integrity and health radiate from the green Sphere near Cobourg Street. A blue Wave announces the Rideau River and the natural world just beyond Wurtemburg Street.” The light boxes are, not surprisingly, most effective at night, when they stand out among their surroundings and can be seen from greater distances. They draw in the curious passerby, like moths to a light bulb. The city is also responsible for Ottawa artist Jennifer Stead’s The Tree of Life, at the corner of Churchill and Byron in Westboro. The 5.5-metre assembly is made of powdered aluminum, cut one inch thick and painted red and yellow. It looks like either a tree or a vase of flowers, depending on where the viewer is positioned, and perched upon its branches or stems are historic scenes of Ottawa — industry, transportation, even a flowing river. Stead’s tree is an arresting work, so big and brightly coloured and multi-faceted. It’s what might happen if Ottawa’s Tim desclouds and New York’s Roxy Paine made a piece together, a thing both fanciful and epic. The city’s “Murals on Underpasses” program is responsible for new mural where Highway 417 traverses Carling and Bank streets. At Carling, the artists Adam Cutts, Patrick Thompson and Alexa Hatanaka created a long mural titled Felled, which depicts the new life that arises from a fallen ash tree. “Elements reference characters in the community, children’s drawings from a local school, intricate wooden structures built in neighbourhood parks and other landmarks,” a release says. My only regret about Felled is that it’s difficult to get a good look at it, so fast and heavy is the traffic roaring through the underpass. It’s not a place where a pedestrian lingers.
The traffic frequently stops beneath the underpass at Bank Street, so it’s easier to take in The Heart of a City in Motion, a mural by the Ottawa artists Felix Berube, Troy Lovegates and Drew Mosley. In their mural the city bustles with people and creatures of diverse shapes and sizes and colours, all busily getting along together.
It’s comic and fun, and so densely composed that I find myself wishing to be stopped by a red light.
Each underpass also has a mural by Nicole Belanger celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary in 2017.
Finally, there’s a temporary project by Ottawa’s Karina Bergmans just north of the National Arts Centre, where steps lead from the Elgin Street sidewalk to the canal.
Bergmans has a long record of textile-based projects in the out of doors, and the latest, funded by Canadian Heritage, is a miniature hockey rink that’s all askew. The usual lines and colours have all been shifted or replaced with others, which forces the passerby to invent a new game.
When I passed on Wednesday, a young boy was playing hopscotch, without a care in the world for stepping on lines. Art begets free spirit. Bravo.
The rink is titled Clapper The Biscuit in the Crease, which is hockey ol’ timer speak for put the puck in the net, and it’s in place until the end of October, before the real ice sets in.