Bus ride sparked artwork
Published Tuesday December 1st, 2009
SAINT JOHN - An imposing retaining wall towering over a stretch of grey ground, a busy street and a mall parking lot beyond form the canvas on which the city's latest, largest and most expensive public art project has been installed.
In transit, comprising 85 bright, aluminum panels running along the nearly 100-metre-long stone wall in front of the new Saint John Transit operations centre, was unveiled Monday during a noon-hour ceremony. It cost $170,000.
"We wanted something site-specific and transit-specific," said Stephen Kopp, who designed the piece with Monica Adair.
When the husband-and-wife pair of Saint John architects first visited the site on the city's east side, it was one of those grey days Saint John is famous for.
Rather than be dismayed by the leaden skies, they accepted grey weather as an element of the landscape - "Fog is part of our psyche," as Adair said - and embraced the drab location as a challenge.
"Where does colour come from in a city?" they asked themselves.
They jumped on the bus for an answer. During a 90-minute ride around town they realized how much vivacity street signs lend to the urban environment, from the bright red and white of a stop to the bold gold and black diamonds of a hazard or the deep green and white of a cul de sac.
Kopp and Adair, master of architecture graduates from the University of Toronto, have long been interested in how colour can transform a landscape. During a study term in Holland, they were influenced by the bold hues of Dutch architecture and design. They brought this sensibility to New Brunswick, cladding the exterior of Hampton Elementary School in bright blue and green in the first project they worked on after joining the Saint John firm Murdock & Boyd Architects in 2007.
For In Transit, along with colour considerations, they contemplated the function of signs - and their ubiquity.
"The buses are constantly in discussion with this dialogue of the road," Adair said. "It is the language of the road."
Intrigued by the notion of signs as a visual language that uses symbols and colours, as well as words, as signifiers, "what happens when you use that language differently?" they wondered.
The pair sliced segments out of street signs, blowing up the swaths to a scale the never occurs on a highway or byway, enlarging the 12.5-centimetre-tall "s" in a stop sign, for instance, to three metres.
Freed from the purely communicative role of the street sign, "we're hoping it will be reinterpreted," Adair said, Kopp adding that he hopes people will simply respond to in transit's scale and bold esthetic.
"You don't need to understand it," he said.
The artists used the same colours and materials as street signs, even commissioning Sojourn, the company that makes signs for Saint John, to construct the panels. Like street signs, they are reflective at night, "activated" by a car's headlights.
"I want to come back really late, when the parking lot is empty, and flash my high beams on it," Bill Thomas, who attended Monday's unveiling, said as he surveyed the panels in the light rain.
It is the first public art on the city's east side.
"Saint John is becoming more and more unique, in a good way, and not just in the uptown," said Michael Wennberg, chairman of the Saint John Community Arts Board, which developed the One Percent for Art policy,. In January, the inaugural One Percent projects were unveiled at the new Saint John Energy headquarters on the west side. Peter Powning's stainless steel sculpture Bolt is visible from the thruway, while customized wooden furniture and panels by Bruce Gray adorn the foyer.
City councillor Chris Titus, chairman of Saint John Transit, said public art is becoming synonymous with new construction in Saint John.
"A building is not truly finished until there's a piece of public art," he said, "it's not dressed."
Hazel Alexander, who lives near the Saint John Transit building, said she was surprised by the installation, which had been wrapped in black garbage bags and duct tape until late Sunday night.
"It wasn't at all what I thought," she said. "I didn't realize that each one is actually part of a sign."
The collage of colour and pattern "blew me away," she said.
"I think if you were going by on the bus, you could really perceive it."
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Art makes us think..whether we like the art itself or not, it should serve to make us THINK.... something that this city can use!
If the city is in such dire straights as you two often point out, then wouldn't that 170,000 be better spent on maintaining our essential services?.
Council wants the fire chief to cut 200,000 or more from his budget. The transit commission is one of the most mis-managed departments in this city. It runs a 2 million+ deficit every year.
Titus misses the report that he asked for from Simonds because of an all expenses paid trip to Vegas, but he's back in time for the photo op in front of a piece of art my 11 year old could have made.
I think the art looks good, however I have never agreed with the cost and location of the new transit headquarters. There was better things that the city's money could have been spent on. A new transit garage was needed and I hope they got a good price for the old site, but I don't think they needed what was built.
This was another case of backroom planning and going ahead with it no matter what people want or need being given consideration (and if memory serves me correctly, without a building permit).
I think the stone wall looked much better...
Give an 11 year old a hose and eventually a fire could be put out too.
Cities are more than cement, steel and the blue collars of those that build them. In order for cities to flourish there needs to be art, colour, vibrancy, creativity, culture - all of this ignites community building and improves the outlook of all citizens.
Money spent on art projects is a 1/4 of a drop in a huge trough sized bucket compared to the wasted money used up in endless gov't committees and bureaucracies and legal proceedings engaged in by unions and corporate lawyers.
Saint John needs to look forward to its next evolution - having some colour in the picture will certainly help in this regard.
This city can be more than just a place to live - it can be a place to be excited about. Projects like these will assist in that goal and I applaud the decision makers for providing more than just a building.