TO Cityscapes

Toronto Through My Lens

Category: Public Art (Page 3 of 6)

Tilted Spheres

October 21, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Hello everyone and welcome back to TOcityscapes after my little hiatus!

Having recently passed through Toronto’s Pearson Airport on an international trip, I had an opportunity to view and photograph this sculpture up close. Given that, I thought a post on this piece would be appropriate.

This work is called Tilted Spheres, created by the artist Richard Serra. It resides at Pearson International Airport in the International Departures area, Terminal 1, and was installed in 2004.

The sculpture is past the security gates, so only international travellers boarding at gates in Pier F will see it and be able to walk among its four sections. It’s so big and heavy that it was laid into the floor when the terminal was under construction, then the walls and ceiling were built around it.

Its sheer size and scope, at 120 tonnes, makes it unmissable. The curved walls create an echo effect that is endlessly tested by intrigued adults and children, thousands of whom pass, and touch, the installation every day.

Whenever I see this work in person I always become enthused; given it’s in the international departures area I identity it with imminent travel, fun and intrigue.

The Loch Gallery

August 10, 2023 / / 1 Comment

The Loch Gallery at 16 Hazelton Avenue in Yorkville usually has amusing artwork out front of the gallery, which change on an occasional basis. I haven’t been past the gallery in a while, but here is a sampling from my last visit:

“No Shoes”

April 21, 2023 / / 3 Comments

I don’t often say this about sculptures or artwork I come across in the city, but this one leaves me cold and uninspired. Created by artist Mark di Suvero, this piece is entitled No Shoes and is located in Corktown Common in the Canary District.

The work does have quite a history. No Shoes was commissioned for the International Sculpture Symposium in Toronto in 1967. That year, Mark di Suvero was a rising star in the international art scene. He was part of a group of artists invited to participate in the Toronto International Sculpture Symposium – an event held to celebrate Canada’s centennial. He created two sculptures in High Park: No Shoes, situated by the woods at the bottom of a hill and the towering Flower Power, which rested at the top of the same hill (you can check out my earlier post on Flower Power here). After a lengthy 2012 restoration overseen by di Suvero himself, No Shoes was moved to Corktown Common in June 2013.

If you’re interested, there is an extensive article here on Mark Di Suvero and the creation, history and rejuvenation of No Shoes.

“Cracked Wheat”

April 16, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Sitting in front of the Gardiner Museum at 111 Queen’s Park is a curious ceramic and bronze sculpture entitled Cracked Wheat. Created by artist Shary Boyle in 2018, this quirky and cracked flask-shaped vase stands tenuously on two little gold legs.

The gold cracks serve as an homage to the 16th century Japanese tradition of Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The tradition celebrates breakage and repair as part of an object’s history. This detail is a tribute to the Kintsugi collection at the Gardiner Museum, a place that is known for showcasing craftsmanship and quality from all over the world, in addition to commenting on colonialism and object valuation.

In contrast, the Canadian Wheat pattern on the front of the vase is a nod to mass-produced tableware designs that were made popular in the 1960s, work that would not likely be on display at the Gardiner Museum. Here, Shary Boyle has aspired to create a work that speaks to the universality of ceramics and show us what they can teach us about our history.1

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“Dreaming”

April 12, 2023 / / 3 Comments

Installed in 2020, Dreaming is a fairly new creation residing at the Richmond-Adelaide Centre, 100 Adelaide Street West. Spanish artist Jaume Plensa is known for creating large-scale public art installations in major cities, including New York, London, Singapore, Tokyo, and now Toronto.

Dreaming is 3 storeys high and was commissioned by the Oxford Properties Group Inc. in 2016. The artwork alters the area’s streetscape and anchors a reimagined public plaza called The Terrace at Oxford’s Richmond-Adelaide Centre. The piece is a cast stone portrait created with white marble and resin, installed on top of a base that serves as a public bench to encourage the public to enjoy the outdoor public space.

This portrait of a young girl with her eyes closed in quiet contemplation was created with the intention of passersby looking inward. Plensa’s vision is for the art to act as a metaphor for humanity’s dreams for the future and for a shared human experience; a concept needed now more than ever before.

As you circle the piece, an optical sensation occurs and the effect messes with your mind and visual senses. Seen from the viewer’s left, the work’s proportions and dimension seem as they should be. As you circle around your right side Dreaming seems to suddenly narrow and it becomes evident how flat the work is in actuality. Viewed directly from the back, Dreaming appears as a small sliver of material.

Dreaming, as it appears from the rear

Here is a short video of the artist speaking about his vision and creation of Dreaming, and the efforts to install the work in the Richmond-Adelaide Centre:

Click here if you’d like to visit the artist’s web page.

“The Water Guardians”

March 31, 2023 / / 3 Comments

On the Front Street Promenade in the Canary district there resides an interesting sculpture entitled The Water Guardians. Created by Toronto artists Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, the painted steel and concrete piece was installed in 2015.

The Water Guardians is an integrated artwork, landscape design and play project. It depicts three towering abstract figures, keeping watch over a stylized river made of recycled rubberized play surface, which flows underneath them. The riverway runs on the same axis as Front Street (east to west within the artwork site) and is punctuated by green mounds of rubberized play surface.

“Still Dancing”

March 18, 2023 / / 1 Comment

Is it a whiskey still? A droplet of liquid? A man and woman dancing?

Myself, I’ll go with the idea of a whiskey still. The sculpture in question – Still Dancing – is by artist and creator Dennis Oppenheim. He describes Still Dancing as a “combination of sculpture, architecture and theatre”.

Installed in the Distillery District in 2009, the piece seems to be an acknowledgement of the Distillery’s brewing/distilling past (if you go with the interpretation of the piece as a whiskey still, that is).

The installation is quite large – the top of the copper apparatus reaches almost 40 feet in height.

“Between The Eyes”

March 13, 2023 / / 2 Comments

Ah yes, the famous egg beaters…

Located at the very foot of Yonge Street at Queen’s Quay East/Lake Ontario sits a curious sculpture entitled Between The Eyes. Established in 1990 by the artist Richard Deacon, this enormous piece resembles a mangled egg beater on steroids. Its gentle curves and angles make for an inspired photoshoot; the structure looks interesting from any direction.

The sculpture is called Between the Eyes. The idea for it developed after my preliminary site visit at which point the site was just an empty lot. I don’t know if they even started breaking ground yet. And there were a couple of things that kind of struck me kind of forcefully at the time. The one was the location at either the beginning or the terminus of the longest street in Canada – Yonge Street – which goes for two thousand miles as an old fur trading route. And, also across from the square is the departure point for the ferries going out to the Islands. So, the site had an implicit kind of focus to it. And the title of the sculpture, Between the Eyes, is somehow reflected ideas about centrality, about distance travel as you came down Yonge Street with your sled load of beaver furs ready to raise trade.

Richard Deacon, Sculptor

The sculpture’s huge but I hadn’t wanted to make a huge lump. So that’s why it’s a skeletal structure, to lighten it, to make it something you can look through rather than it always being something you look at. And the seed of the idea was probably as much to do with just some idea about walking as anything else. The sculpture was intended to look itinerant on the site – that it had arrived and could depart or was going somewhere or had just arrived from somewhere. And that seemed to be the essence of the place, that it was a point of arrival and departure.

Richard Deacon

Ireland Park

February 19, 2023 / / 1 Comment

On the waterfront, behind the Canada Malting Co. towers on Eireann Quay, sits Ireland Park. The Park commemorates the Irish Famine migrants who arrived on Toronto’s shores between 1846 and 1849.

An Unfortunate End

During 1847 alone, at the peak of Ireland’s Great Famine, some 38,500 Irish men, women and children landed at Dr. Reese’s Wharf in Toronto, then a city of about 20,000. Weak from hunger and stricken with illness aboard overcrowded sailing ships, approximately 20% of those who embarked upon the long voyage perished at sea or shortly after their arrival at sites along the St. Lawrence River, including the quarantine station at Grosse Île, Québec.

Within months of the migrants reaching Toronto, the city recorded 1,186 fatalities due to contagious disease, including the deaths of compassionate local clergymen, government officials, and medical workers who came to the migrants’ aid. Their names are inscribed upon the park’s sculptural memorial columns, which are composed of limestone from Kilkenny, Ireland:

Memorial Columns
The Fatalities

The Park Opens

Ireland Park was opened on June 21, 2007, by Mary McAleese, President of Ireland and Robert G. Kearns, Founder of Canada Ireland Foundation. The park was designed by Jonathan M. Kearns, Kearns Mancini Architects.

Arrival

Situated within the park are five bronze sculptures commemorating the migrants’ arrival in Canada. The sculptures are collectively known as Arrival, created by Irish sculptor Rowan Gillespie:

Departure

The Arrival sculptures form a companion group to seven bronze sculptures, entitled Departure (image below), situated on the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin.

Departure
Banks of River Liffey, Dublin, Ireland
(Image in Public Domain)
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Learn more about Ireland Park and the Canada Ireland Foundation
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