2 new public art displays coming to Lake Country

An already dynamic public arts landscape in Lake Country should be enlivened further this summer by a glowing orb and a stylized robotic fruit picker.

The two new projects, approved by the town’s public art commission, will be added to the 28 public art pieces already on display in the town of 14,000.

“We’re really looking forward to adding these two new pieces to our collection,” Sharon McCoubrey, head of the commission, said Sunday.

On Canada Day, Ottawa-based artist Karl Ciesluk will arrive in Lake Country to begin working on an interactive metal sculpture that depicts a variety of fruit trees being harvested by a robot.

“It’s a futuristic theme, one that plays on some of the new research in the fruit tree industry,” McCoubrey said.

Wind will spin the robot’s arms so they appear to move through a multi-coloured canopy of fruit trees. Ciesluk will work on the sculpture in public near the municipal hall.

The art commission has also approved plans for a three-metrehigh illuminated orb, made from glass, metal and tree bark, to be located alongside Highway 97 in Lake Country.

Created in collaboration with the Kelowna-based Alternator Gallery, it’s designed to be a temporary installation, in place for about six months.

Lake Country’s public art collection has one fewer piece than it did earlier this month, when a driver lost control of his car and crashed into a sculpture made from recycled glass.

“Unfortunately, it was a total loss,” McCoubrey said of the accident outside the town’s art gallery. “The glass sculpture just basically exploded, but fortunately nobody was hurt.”