Public Art in Ottawa

[rocketphish]

Ottawa park's new public art inspired by wrong Jack Purcell

Matthew Pearson, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: May 16, 2014, Last Updated: May 20, 2014 4:29 PM EST



The funky new public art pieces in Jack Purcell Park that look like giant badminton racquets are a clever way to pay homage to the celebrated world champion.

Purcell was a badminton icon in Canada, winning five consecutive national championships and securing a spot in the Sports Hall of Fame.

Though he died in 1991, his spirit lives on, and Converse sneakers still bear his name.

Purcell is as worthy as any famous Canadian athlete to have something named for him.

The only problem is the Jack Purcell of badminton fame was from Guelph, Ont.; the Jack Purcell for whom the Elgin Street community centre and adjacent park were named after was actually a longtime Ottawa resident known for mending hockey sticks for children in his Centretown neighbourhood.

“I’m sure people are wondering what in heaven’s names are these things,” said Diane Holmes, the Somerset ward councillor.

She suggested it’s possible the architectural company hired to complete the park’s $525,000 makeover — which began last July and is nearly done — did some basic online research, found the stuff about the badminton player and used it as inspiration.

“I think he just Googled ‘Jack Purcell’ and the only thing that comes up is the badminton player,” Holmes said. “The Ottawa-hockey-stick-helper-out-of-kids doesn’t come up on Google.”

The original design actually called for the racquet-shaped light fixtures — which each cost $4,595 — to be strung like real racquets, but that plan was nixed, Holmes added.

Now the structures are supposed to look like futuristic trees. But people strolling through the park recently over the lunch hour weren’t sure what to make of them.

While one man thought the poles look like oversized question marks, another said they reminded him of the goal posts from Harry Potter’s favourite sport, quidditch.

Still another thought it looked like the city paid an artist to bend some metal.

“I’d like to say that I appreciate art, but these don’t say anything about anything to me,” said Richard Jones, gazing up at them.

After hearing the sorry tale of inspiration gone awry, Eric Olmstead had a suggestion for the city: “Maybe we could ship them to Guelph and say, ‘Hey, we’ll trade you something.’”

But Dan Chenier, the general manager of parks, recreation and culture, contends the 10 fixtures aren’t a total screw up. They accomplish what they were intended to — provide an interesting feature at the park’s east and west entrances. And they light up at night.

“A lot of people don’t even think they look like badminton racquets. They think they just look like stylized hooks or just a shape,” he said, adding the intention was not to commemorate Purcell.

“I don’t think that takes away or adds to Jack Purcell’s story,” Chenier said.

A retired postal worker, Ottawa’s Purcell was dubbed “the stick doctor” because of his penchant for repairing broken hockey sticks in the basement of his home on Cartier Avenue, and giving them to neighbourhood children.

He reportedly supplied 175 mended sticks in the 1964-65 season alone, according to documents in the city’s archives.

His stick-mending career began when his own son, Jon, started playing public school hockey in 1955 and eventually expanded to include skate sharpening.

Purcell died in 1966; the community centre that bears his name opened eight years later.

“That was his whole life,” Purcell’s widow, Rita, said at the time. “Children used to come to the front door asking for sticks. We almost never got through a meal.”

Holmes said she wants to install a plaque in the park to tell people about Ottawa’s Jack Purcell.



Jack Purcell, meet Jack Purcell . . .

Name: Jack Purcell
Lived: Unknown to 1966.
Occupation: Postal worker
Claim to fame: Mending hockey sticks and sharpening skates for children in Centretown in the 1950s and 60s

———

Name: Jack Purcell
Lived: December 1903 to June 1991; Guelph, Ont.
Occupation: Badminton player
Claim to fame: National and world champion

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...g-jack-purcell

[rocketphish]

Ottawa sculptures honouring wrong Jack Purcell noted as national-calibre waste

David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: March 4, 2015, Last Updated: March 4, 2015 4:49 PM EST



Big sculptural badminton racquets installed in downtown’s Jack Purcell Park took honours in the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s annual awards for the worst wastes of taxpayer money.

The Citizen first told the story of the sculptures last spring. As part of a renovation of the park, the city commissioned light standards that doubled as public art. Recognizing the achievements of badminton champion Jack Purcell, the lights are big curved metal installations costing about $4,500 each.

The problem: The badminton player was from Guelph and had nothing much to do with Ottawa. The park is named after a Jack Purcell who lived in Centretown and was renowned for mending broken hockey sticks for the neighbourhood children. Once the lights’ designer realized the mistake, he recast the badminton racquets as “stylized trees” that just happen to look a lot like badminton racquets, with long skinny straight poles topped by oval loops.

The $45,000 sculptures didn’t win their category of wasteful municipal projects: Top honours there went to a Halifax councillor who used $25,000 from his office budget for an 18-foot talking Christmas tree he hoped would be a tourist attraction. Other nominees in the category were a $9-million meeting centre by a Vancouver sewage plant, a $559,000 sculpture in Calgary that reflects and concentrates the sun’s rays until they’re dangerously hot, and the decision of Brampton’s former mayor to expense 44 IQ quizzes on her city phone.

The conservative group gave top marks in the provincial category to Ontario’s $1.9-billion installation of smart electricity meters, which hasn’t cut power consumption the way it was supposed to.

In the federal category, the winner was former Liberal MP and London Mayor Joe Fontana, who gets a federal pension even though he was convicted last year of fraud for submitting an altered invoice so the House of Commons would reimburse him for a cost related to his son’s wedding.

City Spending Gone Wrong:

Here are the nominees from the city category of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s annual awards for the worst wastes of taxpayer money.

Winner: Halifax Regional Municipality Councillor Brad Johns
Nominated for: A talking Christmas tree
Cost: $25,000
Excerpt from the CTF report: Johns used his taxpayer-funded councillor discretionary account — normally used to pay for maintenance for amenities as parks and playgrounds — to purchase a talking Christmas tree. One area resident expressed shock that in spite of “closing fire stations, roads in need of repair, (and) increased fees for various services” the city had money to spend on an 18-foot robotic tree which talks, sings and dances.


Nominee: Metro Vancouver
Nominated for: A sewage treatment plant conference centre
Cost: $9 million
Excerpt from the CTF report: In 2011, the Annacis Wastewater Centre opened next to Metro Vancouver’s biggest sewage treatment plant. It has classrooms and research facilities and was supposed to attract scores of researchers. The facility functions as a rarely used convention centre, with a $390,000 annual deficit. Unsurprisingly, there is little interest in holding conventions, conferences or weddings at a convention centre in an industrial area next to a waste-treatment plant, miles away from the nearest hotel.


Nominee: City of Ottawa
Nominated for: A tribute to the wrong Jack Purcell
Cost: $45,000
Excerpt from the CTF report: The City of Ottawa installed light standards in the shape of giant badminton racquets in Jack Purcell Park to honour Jack Purcell, 1933 world champion badminton player and five time Canadian champion. Unfortunately, that Jack Purcell was from Guelph and isn’t who the park was named for. The Ottawa park was named for a (local) man named Jack Purcell who fixed broken hockey sticks and gave them to local children, as well as sharpening skates for them in the 1950s. The original design for the racquets were supposed to have strings, but once they realized they were honouring the wrong Jack Purcell the strings were removed and now the “racquets” are re-interpreted as “stylized trees.”


Nominee: City of Calgary
Nominated for: Most dangerous public art
Cost: $559,000
Excerpt from the CTF report: The city’s public art program installed a sculpture at the Genesis Centre for Community Wellness: the five metre tall steel sphere allowed visitors to send text messages that were supposed be translated into unique lights and sounds. It didn’t work properly. However, the story gets worse. On a sunny day in January when a visitor was texting a message to the sculpture, the mirrored surface of the sculpture concentrated the sun’s rays and burned her jacket. The artist was asked to fix it but was unable to do so, and the sculpture was moved to storage where it would not be a risk to burning anyone (besides taxpayers).


Nominee: Susan Fennell, former mayor of Brampton
Nominated for: 44 IQ quizzes — and other expenses
Cost: $172,608
Excerpt from the CTF report: An audit of Fennel’s expenses revealed $172,608 of inappropriate expenses, including $220 for 44 IQ quizzes on her phone. Her use of flight passes also breached expense rules. The flight passes included upgrades to business class and were far more expensive then the economy tickets she was supposed to use. Brampton’s council decided to punish Fennel with the maximum penalty they had the power to hand out a, 90-day loss of pay. Fennel ran in the election in October but lost, finishing third.

dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/davidreevely

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-...-calibre-waste

[1overcosc]

Ontario's smart meters didn't lower electricity use the way they hoped, but they did save a lot of operational expenses in managing and tallying manual meters.

They're also very convenient as a consumer for planning/analysis. With the smart meters you can go online and check exactly how much electricity you used in each hour of every day. That lets you do all sorts of analysis: if you think you're being misbilled, check to see if your electricity use actually changes when you're on vacation, and you can go and see if it spiked one day and diagnose inefficient appliances and such based on that. It's a handy tool.

[acottawa]

1% for art is not working well, it is leading to lots of silly projects that don't enhance the community. I would rather see 1% for landscaping or 1% for ongoing maintenance. If it must be art it should go to a general fund that would choose projects based on merit rather than meeting some quota.

[eltodesukane]

I would have preferred some benches, instead of those ugly metal sticks. The area looks like an unfinished construction site.

[OTSkyline]

Yeah, not a big fan of that public art...

a) I don't like the location as it's kind of tucked away from Elgin and just has a lot of parking and back alleys backing onto it.

b) In my eyes, it's not "atsy" enough to just be a standalone piece. It kind of looks like crooked lamp posts.. which at that, at least couldve provided some much needed lighting at night in the park.

[J.OT13]

I prefer one "art piece" in a prominent location. The silhouette family on top of the Bronson Centre entrance is more my speed instead of a bunch of crappy sculptures down a street or in a park. The badminton rackets and giant dildos on Somerset are top of the "what were they thinking" list.

[J.OT13]

Very unoriginal at this point, but...


https://twitter.com/intheglebe/statu...83429912121344

Looks a bit to "Google" to me.

[J.OT13]

City selects South Korean artist’s ‘cozy’ depiction of home as public art for Centretown road reconstruction

Emma Holloway, Capital Current
April 2022


The City of Ottawa has selected the sculptural artwork titled "Home" by South Korean artist Sujin Lim to be installed as the public art element during the reconstruction of Cambridge Street North in Centretown this year. [Image courtesy Sujin Lim/City of Ottawa]

The dreamy outline of a house and puffy clouds will span Cambridge Street North as the public art component of the reconstruction of the Centretown roadway this year.

The City of Ottawa’s Public Art Program hosted a two-stage competition beginning in 2021 for the Cambridge Street North public art project.

The city announced in January that Sujin Lim’s proposed piece, titled Home, was selected as the winner.

The artist’s submission “was selected for its conceptual and visual innovation and its sensitivity towards the site and its community,” the city said in announcing the selection of Lim’s entry in the competition.

“This symbolic take on the iconic shape of a house aims to represent the community members who make the vibrant neighbourhood of Chinatown their home,” the announcement stated. “This artwork will uniquely integrate with the streetscaping of Cambridge Street North and enhance the existing warm residential character.”

Some previous works by Lim, an internationally recognized South Korean-born artist, include a public fountain in Switzerland called Water Square and a group of cloud-like sculptures in South Korea titled Silver Lining.

Lim’s winning piece in the Ottawa competition displays the outline of a house framed by clouds above and a white picket fence on each side of the street. This design is meant to portray, “an imaginary collective front yard,” said Lim, 42.

“I always liked how this house shape could show this notion of home and inclusiveness. One inspiration I had was that the street looks like a communal front yard.” She noted that clouds appear in many of her sculptures.

“I used clouds … in my sculptures many times before,” Lim said. “I take them as a notion of nature and (they present) a nurturing environment a lot in my artwork. Somehow this combination of nature and nurture, I wanted to infuse them in my sculpture,” Lim explained.

This piece is intended to extend a sense of welcomeness that Chinatown already portrays, she said: “One of the main concepts of this project is having an image of (a) home as a landmark. It can differentiate the cultural area and the residential area.”

When Lim visited Ottawa after being selected as a finalist for the Cambridge Street North competition, she sensed the enthusiasm within the multicultural Chinatown community. “It was really, really international,” said Lim. “It was something that I found super inspiring. Everybody loves that they live here. And it’s kind of their own home, although they (may) not (be) from this city.”

The artist said she hopes her piece is able to contribute to this sense of community.

Carlo Santurbano, known as “Consumedbycarlo” on Instagram, is an Ottawa influencer covering all things food and fun. “Sujin Lim’s piece will bring even more character to Chinatown’s already vibrant neighbourhood,” said Santurbano, adding that the piece could become a landmark that draws visitors to the community.

Santurbano said he believes the artwork will add character to the various businesses within the area.

“When I look at the piece it makes me feel a certain kind of cozy, and at home, just like how I’ve felt when dining in Chinatown,” he said. “Walking into one of the many mom and pop restaurants is like walking into their home, and you feel like part of the family.”

Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney was not a part of the jury that selected Lim’s piece, but still: “I like it a lot.”

McKenney assisted the artist in grasping a better idea of the Chinatown area.

This meeting helped Sujin Lim to gain a better understanding of the efforts the local government is making to further develop the neighbourhood. “That really helped shape my approach” she said.

Construction of the artwork is scheduled to begin before the end of the year.

“We need to go through a safety and technical review to make sure we can install the fence,” she said.

https://capitalcurrent.ca/city-selec...econstruction/

[J.OT13]

Follow the article's link to listen to an interview with the artist.

[rocketphish]

How long do you figure this will last before it gets hit by a car?

[FutureWickedCity]

Looked much better before, with the huge planters. It was one of the prettiest blocks in Centertown.

[J.OT13]

They have a barrier to prevent cars from driving from Somerset south down Cambridge a few doors up. Hope they move that barrier, with a proper plaza and greenery to this new art piece to prevent it from getting crushed by an overzealous Chevy Taho driver.

[OTSkyline]

This was just announced in Montreal. I love the grand scale of it and apparently it will be illuminated at night, wow.

I really wish Ottawa would do more unique, grand, art projects around the city. Instead we do small murals in under the 417 and small to medium concrete or bronze statues or memorials at every intersection in the core. Where is the creativity? Where are the colours? The lights? The vibrancy?

Really wish we could do more like this. Something where you turn the corner while walking and genuinely feel wowed. Also something cool and let's not forget, Instagrammable

[J.OT13]

I agree, Ottawa lacks big, bold art installations. Pimisi stations contains some of the best new public art in the city, with the eel sculpture in the aqueduct and the moose, but that's still not quite at the level of Montreal.

Here's the winning art piece for Montreal Road at River Road in Vanier.

• Video Link

[DEWLine]

The Glebe wordmark does seem...bland. Maybe it's the choice of typeface?

[J.OT13]

Damage to Chinatown sculptures shows 'so much disrespect,' says BIA

Sarah Kester · CBC News · Posted: Jul 03, 2023 4:00 AM EDT

Colourful statues put up in February and March to attract foot traffic



Colourful statues bought to help revitalize Chinatown have been vandalized and even stolen since they were installed this winter, and the local business improvement area wants answers.

Yukang Li, executive director of the Chinatown BIA, said there were eight groups of statues put up on Somerset Street West between Bronson Avenue and Preston Street.

Not one of them has been spared.

"Every single group of the statues has either been stolen, or there's at least one structure got damaged," Li said.



There were pandas, colourful dinosaur chairs for kids to sit on, and all sorts of characters from popular Chinese cartoons. They had to be shipped to Ottawa from China, Li said, adding he's not sure the BIA has the money to replace them.

"For now, unless we get external funding to replace these statues [we'll] take the remains away," he said, referring to a group of damaged pink musician sculptures, one of which had been severed above its knees.

"And we'll have two instead of four or five statues in this group."



Culturally important

Li said the statues were installed in February and March through a revitalization effort funded by the federal government's Tourism Relief Fund.

The community was hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, Li said, and the idea was to try and bring foot traffic back to the area and help local businesses.

Chinese-Canadians worry about racism, job losses one year into pandemic

"We installed these statues to beautify our street and to create multiple focus points along Somerset Street where tourists and our community members' families could have somewhere nice to spend time with friends and families and to take selfies," he said.

But more than that, the statues are culturally significant for Chinese and other Asian communities, he said.

"This is so much disrespect to our work, to our culture and to our community's well-being," he said. "I just don't understand why people have done this. It's very discouraging for us."

Chinatown 'in pieces'

Micheline Mathon lives in the area and said she was excited to see the statues when they first appeared.

"It was great to see. It was beautiful," she said.

Mathon said it was awful that someone felt the need to destroy an initiative that was put in to make the area more interesting.

"It's just sad. It's not fun for, you know, the tourists coming to town and seeing our city, our Chinatown, just in pieces," she said.

Li said some security camera footage that may have captured the vandals has been handed over to police.

CBC News reached out to the Ottawa Police Service on Sunday for more details but none were forthcoming.



https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...ized-1.6895055

[J.OT13]

Social media abuzz about Ottawa's new roadkill crow sculpture



Josh Pringle, June 28, 2023
CTV News Ottawa

A giant crow lying along the LeBreton Flats Pathway in Ottawa's west end is the talk of social media, with reactions ranging from, 'What is it?' and 'you paid someone money for that' to 'I think it's cool" and "interesting for sure."

The National Capital Commission unveiled the new public art along the pathway on Tuesday, called, 'When the Rubber Meets the Road' by PEI artist Gerald Beaulieu.

"Did you know there used to be a landfill at LeBreton Flats?" the NCC said on Twitter. "In line with the #BuildingLeBreton guiding principle of fostering sustainability, this piece is made from recycled tires."

The five metres-long crow lying just off the pathway is made entirely from recycled tires.

"This large crow lies flat on the ground in a manner that resembles roadkill, symbolizing the collision between human and natural works," says the plaque next to the sculpture.

"The crow is made from old tires, which refer to the harm caused by our commuter culture as well as the crow's role as a scavenger of urban waste. The artwork invites us to reflect on how we impact our environment and the creatures that inhabit our shared spaces."

In a statement to CTV News Ottawa, the NCC says the one-year rental of the piece cost $14,022.

"The department of Canadian Heritage helped facilitate the project by connecting the NCC with suitable options from drawn from previous public art selection processes," the statement says. "This artwork was submitted by the artist in 2018 as part of a juried evaluation of existing artworks for temporary display in federally managed locations in Canada’s Capital region."

Beaulieu tells CTV News Ottawa his creation is designed to start a conversation.

"The reactions have always run the gauntlet from people being annoyed by it and people absolutely loving it, and that's the best an artist can hope for," Beaulieu said.

The 'When the Rubber Meets the Road' piece uses 50 to 60 tires, and it took Beaulieu a month to create the piece.

Beaulieu says the piece is about the "risk and rewards" of our interactions with nature.

"The idea behind it was just to address the environmental impact of our society, when it collides with nature," Beaulieu said Wednesday afternoon.

According to Beaulieu's website, the piece has previously been on display during Art in the Open in Charlottetown and the Bonavista Biennale in Port Rexton, NL.





Social media posts by CTV News Ottawa and the National Capital Commission solicited hundreds of comments about the artwork and the federal agency's decision to showcase the work.

"Haters gonna hate," said one comment on the NCC's Instagram page. "Well done NCC clearly creating conversation around this piece."


Another comment on Instagram said, "What an effective work to express such strong reactions from viewers."

"It may be art, but it's also a distraction for drivers and cyclists," a comment on the CTV News Ottawa Facebook page said.

On Twitter, people questioned why the NCC had installed the art piece.

"This makes me sad. It's a dead crow," said one person.

"How much this pile of tires cost the government?" said another comment on Twitter. "Was it just dropped in a field. I am not an art connoisseur but what is it?"

One comment said, "April 1 was a couple of months ago."

"Looks like a dead bird," said former Coun. Alex Cullen.

One Twitter comment said they will need to check it out in person.

"It’s probably more impactful in person, like much great art. Using recycled material is a great artistic technique."

Beaulieu says he was taking photos of the crow on Tuesday at LeBreton Flats and witnessing people's reactions to the art.

"They were curious, they were talking photos," Beaulieu. "For the most part, they were quite curious and they were quite taken with it."

The NCC says the art will be on display until June 2024.

The piece was on loan to the Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery in New Brunswick in 2022.

The gallery's website said Beaulieu uses "familiar materials to examine the boundary between what is natural and manmade, helpful or harmful."

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/social-med...ture-1.6459012