Collossus

Rodney Graham, Millennial Time Machine: A Landau Carriage Converted to a Mobile Camera Obscura

This Saturday I participated in a charrette for UBC Farm. It was a creative visioning exercise for marking and mapping some ideas for the future of the farm, held on the UBC campus. One of the things I've been thinking about lately is the civic penchant for comissioning (expensive) concrete monuments as public art. As a process-based artist with an aversion to creating permanent objects, the urge to leave a giant scultpure on this earth is foreign to me. However, I am intrigued by those who need to make big things. I grew up in prairie, the land of giant Canada Geese, wheat sheaves, Ukrainian Easter Eggs, Perogies, and the world's largest tomahawk in Cutknife Saskatchewan. I am entertained by the giant objets de pop created by Claes Oldenburg and his wives Pat Muschinski and Coosje van Bruggen.


A few years back I read an article (the source escapes me now) which talked about the ephemeral nature of art that was expected to last longer than it did. In fact one of Oldenburg's giant soft hamburgers had a pickle on top on which the paint was peeling. The artist was asked to supply a new pickle. It arrived a bit rumpled because C.O. had used it as a pillow in the airplane on the way to deliver it to the gallery. I love that story, but even more so now that I know it was actually his first wife, now named Patty Mucha, who did all the work sewing those mammoth soft sculptures. And she still doesn't get much credit for doing it all these years later!

These cement logs by Myfawnwy Mcleod are amusing, because they take and ephemeral object and literally make them concrete. I'm interested in the erosion of public art. Is this shadenfreude? Oh, probably.

Myfawnwy McLeod, Wood for the People

Anyhoo, at this charette one of the things that struck me was how the architects leading our group (who were amazing, BTW) needed to mark the farm from the road with a big sign, or architechtural element that got people's attention and announced "This is a farm!" I appreciate you need signage that tells people they have arrived, but in this case I prefer the subtle approach. The farm is tucked away and sheltered in a beautiful forest. The forest doesn't need to advertise what it is, it just need to be a forest. The farm doesn't need a giant blackberry (the fruit, not the gadget) or plywood rainbow to tell people they are in a beautiful place.

I mean, giant sculptures can be awesome. This new giant Kelpies by Andy Scott look brilliant. I love the fact that they actually have a function, according to the Guardian:

"Unlike Antony Gormley's sculpture outside Gateshead, the Kelpies will be functional as well as aesthetic, operating the first lock on the east end of the Forth-Clyde canal near Falkirk. The heads will slowly rock forward and back to push water into the lock and raise boats into the canal."

I wish this stunning piece a long life as the lines from Shelley's Ozymandias run through my mind. Recite it with me now, breathing from the diaphram:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

For some perverse reason, this is one of my favorite poems. It reminds me of everything from decaying grain elevators, to precariously leaning barns, to the stacks of "junk" we have piled all around our house. This too, shall pass. In the meantime, let's embrace the cycle of birth, life, and decay. People love the giant tree in Stanley Park, simply because of its size. It is breaking down now, and doing what trees are meant to do, becoming part of the cycle of death and recreation. Time for it to become a site where a cedar seed to gives birth to a new tree.

Another thing that came up as an idea from one of the architects that was maybe sculptures are like crops---they need to be rotated. By George, that's a great idea! It's a good idea to recognize the organic quality of a piece of art with respects to its relationship to the environment and the viewer. Either that, or like the beautiful carvings and totem poles in the First Nations House of Learning at UBC the art is integrated in a harmonious way into the structure of the site itself. That's the challenge that we're faced with in a beautiful setting like UBC Farm.