Today, Marilyn, Ken, Susan, Lorna, Linda and Virginia (me) took the #20 bus downtown, got off at Hastings and Richards Streets, and walked to the Vancouver Convention Centre with the idea of checking out the Body Mind & Spirit convention - until we found out it cost $12 each.
Fortunately, I had brought along the Public Art Walk pamphlet published by the City of Vancouver Office of Cultural Affairs and we started treasure hunting for the artwork set up along the north waterfront between Hornby and Denman Streets. First we stopped at Urban Faire on Bute and Hastings for a quick lunch. Urban Faire is an upscale, down-scaled version of deli, lunch bar, and grocery store in the centre of Yuppie ville (the West End).
We never found the "pair of aluminum lions frozen mid-jump" at the foot of Hornby Street across from Canada Place. Perhaps we didn't crane our necks far enough; according to the photograph in the pamphlet, the lions are on a tall two-legged steel structure way above ground. But we did locate the "macro time piece" - three rotating platforms in the plaza west of the Vancouver Club building. Either the platforms were not rotating today or we did not have enough patience to stand and watch. A complete revolution takes one hour.
Our walk continued along Hastings to the Marine Building at the corner of Burrard. Details of this building were provided in a blog earlier this year. At 401 Burrard, situated "outside the main entrance, five cubes glide up and down a simple steel structure in direct correlation to the movement of the elevators on the inside of the building." As passengers enter and leave the elevators, the ebb and flow of their footprints is transferred onto an LED matrix screen on the bottom of each of the five cubes 10 feet above the sidewalk.
We headed along Cordova to the Bayshore waterfront walkway and gardens. At 323 Jervis Street we met an older resident, Glen Patterson, who helped us locate the installation called "Weave", which includes brass weaving mounted on the building's five pillars, aluminum grids at the base of four trees, steel benches with historical names punched through the seats, and brass rings representing ocean waves embedded in the walkway's slate tiles. Glen told us about two other sites to see in the park facing the harbour: first was a cedar log carved by passers-by at the request of the sculptor; the final work looks like ocean waves and is titled "Ship Wreck". In the distance, beneath the golden leaves of young birch trees, we could see the newest addition to the park, called "pillows", cement pillow-shapes painted white.
On the Bayshore Waterfront, we found two of the three open steel and glass shelters with roofs pitched at a slight grade to allow rain run-off to spill into a grid in the sidewalk, from where it was sluiced through underground pipes into the harbour.
By this time, it was one o'clock and we decided to call it a day. Lorna said her good-byes and headed home (she lives in the West End but she is not a yuppie). Marilyn and Ken decided to walk down Denman to Davie Street where a ring of statues with laughing faces stands in a circle in the park at English Bay.
The rest of us caught the bus back to Britannia Centre.
Next week we will start out at English Bay and work our way around the south shore of downtown Vancouver to pick out more public art works.
Contributor Virginia
No comments:
Post a Comment