The installation of work of
public art is a special moment, and for that we hold a small celebration and
dedication. I would like to speak a bit about public art and how it is different
from the domestic arts, those art works that we place in our homes or offices.
First of all – domestic
art: easel paintings, watercolours, photographs, collages and montages,
engravings and prints, glass and small cast sculpture, ceramics, needlework,
found objects, action figures, Kinder Surprises, foreign money, postcards and
greeting cards, fridge magnets . . . For all of the images I have a
collected in my life I vainly try to find a place in my home. The most recent
acquisitions find a prominent place in the living room or the study, the older
pieces are relegated to a spare bedroom or hallway or stored in a closet, in a
box. In my kitchen I hang posters and postcards and stick my son’s elementary
school art work to the refrigerator – things that can be cleaned or thrown out
or folded up and put away if damaged or no longer wanted. And in my bathroom, I
try to find artwork that will withstand the dampness of the shower and perhaps
articulate for me the romance of water and the banality of ablution.
Domestic art for me may be
a little bit sentimental, recalling people I have known and worked with over
the years, places I have been, or enthusiasms and interests that I have long
since left behind. My domestic art might also be a charm, some dangling thing
that is sweetly optimistic and speaks to my sunny side, or a talisman, a
container for my fears and nightmares – an object that carries good luck, and
wards off the bad.
What characterizes domestic
art for me, however, is its temporality. We can change it according to our
moods. We may acquire it impulsively, rearrange the furniture to accommodate
it, paint the walls a different colour to frame it, then in a few months, or a
year or two, grow tired of it. It gets knocked and jostled, acquires a wine
stain from a party, a chip from the Nerf ball fight the boys had in the living
room. The new girlfriend hates it. The old one takes it. Eventually it ends up
in a garage sale. The life of an image begins again . . .
But a work of public art? Now
that is a different life entirely. A work of public art is not an expression of
personal taste or impulsiveness. Public art is a social activity from the
beginning, the product of planning committees, juries, and advisory panels. The
artist becomes a catalyst for the hopes and fears of the community. A public artwork
may reflect a sentimental side or mark a milestone in the community’s history. In
this way public art is not so different from its domestic cousin. The
expression of the individual becomes the expression of the community.
Public art is different
because it is made to endure, because the sun and the rain and the cold and the
wind erode even stone over time. The surface must be resilient to withstand the
probing and stroking of a million hands and the structure must be sound to
support the climbing of a thousand children. Pubic art is made to endure the
elements and in so doing, it lives a different life. We see it under different
conditions. In the heat of the summer when we seek shelter from the sun and
when shade seems hard to find, the artwork does not sweat. In the fall, when
the wind blows cooler and the days begin to shorten, the artwork may begin to
cast larger shadows, and glow in that peculiar orange light that I associate
with autumn, and it will seem somehow strange that the artwork does not regret
the passing of summer. In the winter, when we dress to ward off the cold, the artwork
is naked but for a thin skein of snow or a decorative trim of icicles. It will
appear to laugh at our frailty and our sensitivity to the cold. And in the
spring it is new again, in those first warm sunny days, alongside the budding
trees it shares that green and yellow light of the next growing season.
Carol Bradley's genius is
to give what is durable – glazed and fired clay – the texture, sparkle and
magic of lapping water, an image that is at once transitory and timeless. Where
this artwork is placed, it won’t be climbed upon or receive the caresses of a
million hands, but it will be there through the seasons and the years. In its
position over the door I hope that it doesn't develop icicles. Carol has caught
the blues, greens and turquoises we associate with a pool of water's colour
refractions and she has given them back to us. In the summer when we are dry
this Pool will signal the promise refreshment. In the winter, when we are
cold, this Pool promises a tepid bath. For toddlers, Carol's Pool will always
be associated with Water Babies, a first swim with a parent. For elementary
school children, these colours and shapes will be associated with going to
swimming lessons. For teenagers, this image of water will become a symbol of
early romantic flirtations. For adults, the rippling surface of this artwork
may come to represent the bittersweet discipline of regular physical exercise,
or the pool lanes may become a symbol of a place of meditation and stress
reduction from the burdens of work. Seniors will retain this image in
connection with aquabics, the social life that this water activity affords
them, and wonderful feeling buoyancy that water can give to an aging body.
The life of this mural will
span generations whose memories of home, family and friends will take place
under this sign. Children will be born, grow into adults and eventually die,
yet the blue, green and turquoise of Carol's mural will continue to lap and
sparkle – a constant in our always changing lives.
ars longa, vita brevis (art
is long, life is short)
Gordon Hatt, 2003
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