Category: Commission

public art exposed: a peek behind the scenes at new show

8/29/2014

It's one thing to dream up an idea for the back end of the elevated Canada Line track and quite another to see that dream come together in a mammoth aluminum sculpture.

Metal fabrication at the Select Steel shop, Delta. Carlyn Yandle photo

So when I got my first glimpse of the progress of Cluster at the metal fabricators this week, the piercing clang and whine of the shop suddenly seemed to give way to the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Whoa.

It was exactly as I had imagined it, except for the immensity. That something so voluminous could come out of a bundle of bubble tea straws was sort of short-circuiting my brain.

Well?, their faces seemed to ask.

"It's... very... big," I said, immediately thankful their earplugs spared them from hearing the bleeding obvious.

Cluster concept sketch (image by Carlyn Yandle)

Of course, no one sees these moments of shock, nor all the anxiety, revelation, frustration, obsession typical of the emotional swings that go into the creation of public artwork. When Cluster is hoisted into position next month, its narrative will be in the eye of the beholder, its entirety read in an instant.

But a new Richmond Art Gallery exhibit (opening next Friday evening, Sept. 5) is pulling back the curtain on the process behind five public artworks that dot the city, in its City As Site show, curated by RAG director Rachel Lafo. Here is where visitors will see evidence of the beginning of the ideas that were pitched, developed, reworked, and finally translated into forms for public placement. Combined with that focus is a survey of all artwork in the local public sphere that is defining Richmond as not just another clutter of condos but a specific space in a particular time.

Metal fabricator Jordan Thys at work. (Carlyn Yandle photo)

For me, laying bare some of my half-baked early concepts and awkward sketches that led to the development of Cluster (as well as the Crossover crosswalk design) is slightly uncomfortable but this is a warts-and-all display. Not shown is the high level of trust that must exist for any collaborative project to succeed: trust in one's own ideas, the physical properties of the materials, the skill and temperment of fabricators, the foresight of structural engineers, and the patience of the commissioning bodies. Public art projects come with the headache-y package of issues of insurance, permits, budgets, timelines and many unforseeables. In short, it's much more than a good idea.

Embedded in those physical projects is the intangible quality of faith. Cluster isn't done yet, but I have faith that it will soon be a thing in the manufactured landscape that will spark conversation, which will connect people and by extension contribute toward a unique, vibrant community and cultural hub.

Fingers crossed anyway.

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Desperately seeking lost painting

8/22/2014

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Grey Lace, 2014, by Carlyn Yandle. Acrylic on canvas, 40" x 67"

This week I am testing the usefulness of social media in locating a painting.

Grey Lace is not my first commission, but a favourite, done over two months this past winter. It is an abstract field in muted tones with shards of red and aqua that references a particular handmade doily, on a ground of many layers of glaze. (See video of the making of this painting here.)

It was designed for a living room in Budapest (renowned for handmade lace) but left behind in the International departure lounge at Vancouver International Airport on Aug. 3.

The owner of the lost painting is, understandably, more than a little sheepish. The Lost and Found office clerk knows him by name now due to his frequent transcontinental phone calls. Has it shown up? Any word?

The 40" x 67" acrylic-on-canvas was prepared for carry-on travel, sandwiched in acid-free paper and rolled onto a tube, then wrapped in protective plastic and taped securely on all seams. It was set down in the meal-purchase area in the evening hours before the family of four's 13-hour journey and forgotten in the group's carry-on luggage.

Photo: thriftshopperforpeace.wordpress.com

There are a million stories about personal items left behind at airports, never to be found again. My mother once left her jacket in one of the grey bins in security but it was gone without a trace even before her flight left. This is the risk of circulating in an international travel hub that saw almost 18 million passengers pass through in 2013 and more than 9 million passengers in the first six months of this year alone.

About 250,000 items were surrendered at Canada’s eight major airports in 2011, with most of it ending up in the trash due to the extreme volume stuff and severe space restrictions at the nation's biggest airport, Pearson. It's a better scenario here at YVR where the airport chapel accepts the seized and the unclaimed and sells it at its Fridays-only chaplaincy thrift store, open noon to 5 p.m. at 4871 Miller Rd. on Sea Island. (Promotional video below).

But we're in the opposite position: trying to claim something that can't be found. I'm heading out to the store anyway on faint hope that the tube is standing in a corner somewhere. Or maybe, just maybe — and this may be where the social media miracle comes in — it was purchased and is hanging on a wall somewhere. Maybe I can work out something with that buyer.

It's a nicer thought than the picture that keeps popping up in my head: Grey Lace In Landfill.

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Golden Tree a better tribute than 'real' tree

3/14/2014

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This week marks the unveiling of Golden Tree, Douglas Coupland's latest public artwork, to be installed next year at the southern gateway to Vancouver, at Cambie and Marine Drive.

The gold-patina, steel-reinforced resin and fiberglass mirror image of the famous hollow tree in Stanley Park will stand in front of a billboard-sized image of Stanley Park forest at the entrance to an Intracorp condo tower complex.

And already the tongues are wagging.

This is when the art is working, when people are a little alarmed at the materials, the placement, the meaning. If art is a conversation with many often conflicting viewpoints, public artwork connects directly to the public. We not only have the opportunity to weigh in; we have the right.

So I'm weighing here on Golden Tree: Love, love, love. A respected colleague suggested I was drinking the Coupland Kool-Aid. So I had to think about that. Am I too close to the artist to form a critique? What exactly has me digging the blingy dead tree-thing?

For the record, unlike Coupland, I was not in the 'for' camp for propping up the dead tree-thing in Stanley Park, or, at least in the way it was done (see video clip below on the story behind the prop-up project). I could not understand the panic around the parks board's news that the rotted, leaning partial carcass would have to go back to nourishing the forest floor. To quell the knee-jerk public outcry, the shell-fragment has been stabilized with concrete and steel. So now we have fake tree-thing, with all the artistic integrity of a movie prop or Disney street-furniture, and I'm sure the tourists love it.

There had to be a better way to remember that scrap of a giant relic of the last stand of old growth forest that has been replaced by a dense forest of glass, concrete and steel. And now we have it, incongruously situated in the newest area of condo-tower densification, the gold evoking (to me, at least) festishization of an object, or our view of the ancient temperate rainforest seen through gold-coloured glasses as we glide by on the Canada Line.

I like the idea that the title necessarily includes 'tree' because this sculpture's connection to tree-ness is tenuous, sort of like someone's stuffed dead pet cat, now with marble eyes and in regal pose for all eternity. The title could have been This is Not A Tree, evoking Belgian surrealist artist Magritte's The Treachery of Images work, specifically his Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is Not A Pipe) that is in fact not a pipe but a painting of a pipe.

From a working-artist viewpoint, Golden Tree, like Coupland's Infinite Tire, ingeniously walks that fine line between creating a work that will be approved by the private developer but that doesn't pander to that payer. Its form, placement and materials deny a single meaning, reflecting these shifting, tenuous times. It could have easily been included in The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas at the Smithsonian for its powerful subtext. (Hear more about the power of uncertainty in sculpture in this podcast interview with Hirshhorn museum curator Anne Ellegood.)

Now that we have a powerful tribute to the last "standing" giant conifer in the downtown area, perhaps we can let the original go the way nature intended, helping ensure the future of the city's lungs in Stanley Park.

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true craftsman makes a crazy idea real

12/13/2013

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While the rest of us are scrambling to post our recent activity, build our brand, be a part of the online conversation, Noah is solving problems through metal. His underwhelming website is testimony to what he does instead all day long instead of sitting at a computer, often seven days a week, for money and for love.

I found him through a trusted recommendation and knocked on his hand-crafted metal-ball door-knocker back in May, with my metal problem: I wanted to make a quilt out of reclaimed copper piping and other old gizmos. I had my pitch all ready to go, something along the lines of, "I know this sounds crazy but hear me out..." but I could see he was already loving the idea.

"I really want to do it," he said, and I could see I had found the right craftsman for the job.

For the next four months, Noah turned my full-size paper pattern pieces into two mirror-image, six-foot-square quilts of 10 lapping 'log cabin' blocks, which was installed in the front entrance of the City of North Vancouver's new Operations Centre last night, at the time of this posting.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss. I didn't even know what brazing was when assemblage artist (and Noah's neighbour) Valerie Arntzen brought me around to his place. I didn't know that you can't just solder different metals together. I simply handed over the goodies I found at my favourite scrap yards (thank you for putting those gems aside, Richard of North Star Recycling and Dung of Allied Salvage). Apart from some initial head-scratching and smiling, Noah did not harp on the fact these were time-consuming challenges. Had I known the trouble he would take dissembling old spigots and repairing bronze pressure gauges I might have clawed back on the scrappy treasures.

It also had not dawned on me that paper patterns might not be suitable in a workplace that is all fire and molten metal, a problem he solved by laying a thick piece of tempered glass between the patterns and the hot solder and copper. Problem-solving is the mark of fine craftsmanship.

Noah claimed to like the quilter's block-by-block approach to creating complex pattern and texture. I appreciated the fact that he also saw visual value of keeping the soldering drips and the entire range of patinas of copper, from black to turquoise to new-penny pink, instead of polishing it all to a high sheen. That ability to let go of the need to create a perfect joint or a uniform result speaks to the artist in this craftsman.

The nuts and bolts: Hand-drawn renderings were translated into an Illustrator file and printed out as full-size colour-coded block patterns to indicate three levels as well as placements for found features. Noah adjusted for the bulky tees and elbows as he transformed the patterns into a three-dimensional matrix, and situated specific gizmos to enhance the subtle mirror-image effect.

There are many leaps of faith in the making of something never before attempted. No amount of sketching, Photoshop'd artist renderings or 3-D modelling can create the same sense of the actual thing in its intended space. So as City of North Vancouver workers passed by during the installation last night, joking about how it looked like their last job, or asking if we've checked for leaks, or pointing out some gizmo-relic they remember (including some donated from the City's own works yard), we were having our own first look at our collaborated effort. The glints of hand-rubbed corners and the deep shadows on the wall were all pulling together in this soaring, 12-foot-high structure.

And... breathe out. Waterwork is working. Thank you, Noah.

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How not to pass out While Painting

9/6/2013

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I could never understand why the armies of construction workers in this town would head for the Wendy’s or Burger King over a nutritious, fresh soup and salad next door. That was before I started spending long days under a respirator spraypainting in a cavern of concrete. When you’re involved in continuous sweaty, labourious activity, you’re not about to squander your one meal break waiting around for little bits of things to be arranged on a plate. This is no time to pick your way through a Whole Foods buffet bar, then line up at the cashier. You need to mainline those big fatty, sugary, caffeinated calories. Now.

A daunting, dark space takes on new life as a geometric colour field.

My purple man's business shirt has it all covered.

This is just one of the ah-ha moments that came to me during Phase I of the Parkade Painting project. Another big learning moment: carbon dioxide can wreak havoc with the logic centre of the brain, which in retrospect explains a lot of stoopid mistakes I made in the process of turning a wide expanse of concrete into a geometric colour field, like forgetting pattern choices and mixing up colours. Turns out that carbon dioxide builds up in the mask over time so you — and by you I mean me here — have to come up for real, non-fumey air at least once an hour. I should have solicited advice from my encaustic-painting friends on this one before I got to the point where I was staggering around, forgetting the whole purpose of spending these last summery days in carcinogenic clouds of propellants and other nasty chemicals I can’t pronounce.

I like the risk of taking on a daunting project of a scale not normally tackled by a five-foot-two female but I’m risk-averse to exposing myself to a toxic environment so except for the no-breaks slip-up, I’m serious about suiting up for the task at hand. In this case that means protecting the largest organ — the skin — from exposure. Here, the Smart Girl’s Guide to Spraypainting in the Summertime:

1. Cover it all. If you’re of my stature you will search but never find Carhartt coveralls that fit your female frame, and Home Depot’s one-size-fits-all disposable painting jumpsuit just doesn’t have the majority of the people who do home painting (women) in mind. You will have to improvise. I wear a (particular) man’s business shirt over a workout top and loose cotton pants. The cuffs and top-buttoned collar has it covered, plus the breast pocket is perfect for storing gloves. All this goes over light cotton pants and runners.

One day of painting shows particulate trapped in a cartridge filter.

2. Speaking of gloves, I like the snug, waterproof Watson gardening gloves, because you won’t find painting gloves in your size at Home Depot. And disposable gloves and painter's tape are a bad mix.

3. Respirator and Safety glasses. These should be viewed as a two-part must-have unit. Silly dust masks are for chumps. We like our brain cells. If you can smell the chemicals through the mask, it’s not working, but that’s not to stay that the cartridge is not done. It’s hard to predict when a cartridge should be replaced but I switch out the filter pads as soon as they look less than pristine and change the cartridges as I'm psyching myself up to embark on one of these harebrained art schemes, which is about once a year.

4. Head scarf. I tie it snug and low around the forehead so it meets the top of my glasses. Spraypainted hair is nasty.

Now onto Phase II....

Only artist-quality spraypaint can handle the pits and scars of industrial concrete walls.

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The genius of keeping things open

10/26/2012

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It's a tricky business, doing a public-art commission for a private corporation, especially when there are big strings attached to the cash: the thing has to salute the business itself.

The really tricky part is creating something that doesn't pander to the payer because, well, that just ain't art.

Which is why I love Infinite Tire, the newly installed cast aluminum 60-foot tower by Douglas Coupland, at the new Canadian Tire mecca on south Vancouver's Marine Drive.

Like Coupland, I spent my early adult years in print media negotiating the ad-driven war-zone of sales and editorial. While the ads drive the business and the sales reps relentlessly lobby for profit-motivated editorial content, good writers quickly learn how to create engaging stories that don't spoon-feed readers but provide space for them to exercise their own faculties of judgment and reason.

This is how crafting the story connects to crafting the concept for an artwork. While Infinite Tire may seem an obvious salute to an icon of a ubiquitous Canadian store — its own MotoMaster tire — it could also reverberate as a statement about the never-ending line of climate-changing motor vehicles that defines our times, reaching up into the threatened atmosphere. Or it could be just a celebration of scale, repetition or whimsy, as hinted to in its title that plays on Brancusi’s Infinite Column.

The reading all depends on your own sensibilities. Not surprisingly, I immediately connected this sculpture's physical open-ness to lacy openwork: crocheted pattern through negative space.

There's a lot of room to play in that open space.

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public art exposed: a peek behind the scenes at new show

Desperately seeking lost painting

Golden Tree a better tribute than 'real' tree

true craftsman makes a crazy idea real

How not to pass out While Painting

The genius of keeping things open

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