| Best Public Art
There’s no shortage of public sculpture in Calgary, but when given the task of choosing the "best," well, then it gets tough. I can’t say I care for most of the attempts to beautify the city through permanent monuments of twisted metal or fibreglass.
Looking beyond this, between the cracks of official art projects, some gems do come to mind. Take, for example, the Flowerbed Project developed by Ryan Nordlund and Ryan Schmidt earlier this year. Light years away from the "building turds" that have been dropped indiscriminately throughout the city, Nordlund and Schmidt’s flowerbed was an attempt to establish a meaningful dialogue between the city and its inhabitants.
Sitting outside of the Art Gallery of Calgary last April – as part of an exhibition entitled Out and out in the big city – the piece was not obviously an "art object." Most visitors and many locals strolling along Stephen Avenue Mall overlooked it.
To those who took the time to closely examine the piece, the innocuous looking flowerbed revealed a rather shocking secret. Doors on the side opened to an insulated sleeping chamber, as well as storage bins beneath the benches.
Unfortunately, by laying bare the city’s unadvertised anti-vagrancy policy, the piece fell victim to the same gag order, and the police ordered that the piece be locked between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. to prevent people from sleeping in it as the artists intended. Still, by provoking the city to "play" the piece, Nordlund and Schmidt instigated a much-needed discussion about Calgary’s homeless. |
