THE `HUMAN VIRUS'
A local artist used wood chips to make a statement about homelessness in the area between Salter and Caron avenues, north of University Avenue West in Windsor.
A giant piece of artwork has emerged out of the piles of wood chips left behind after chainsaws were recently taken to a forested ravine in downtown Windsor that was used last year as an encampment by the homeless.
Row upon row of the words “Human Virus” are stacked upon each other along the bottom of the treecleared ravine just west of Caron Avenue between bridges on University Avenue West and Riverside Drive West.
It's a stark ecological message, said local photographer Gerry Kaiser, who encountered the artist undertaking his project a week ago.
In the midst of a pandemic caused by a highly contagious coronavirus indiscriminately attacking humans, Kaiser said the artist “talked in ecological terms — this was the `human virus' attacking nature, the mentality of chopping everything down.”
About two dozen homeless people who had made “The Cut” their home in the thickly wooded, privately owned ravine were forced out of their encampment by police, bylaw and other city workers in November.
Prior to the encampment being torn down and cleared out, Windsor firefighters were brought in to hose everything down.
More recently, workers went in and removed the trees and shrubs, leaving behind an open cut and piles and piles of wood chips that have now been turned into art and a political statement.