Somerset Street West Reconstruction plan
Last Wednesday evening, the Public Art & Community Art division at the City of Ottawa invited the general public to take a peek at the finalist submissions of the public art competition for the Somerset Street West Reconstruction Project. 16 proposals were originally submitted and the list has been narrowed down to five artists/teams (as posted on the City’s website):
Ryan Stec
Adrian Göllner & Andrew O’Malley
Deborah Margo & Laura Taler
Ian Birse & Laura Kavanaugh
Charlynne Lafontaine & Ryan Lotecki
About one hundred people came out to meet the artists, view maquettes of the proposed designs, ask questions, and provide feedback to the city for the upcoming jury selection process. Melissa Ramsden, who is helping coordinate the juried competition for the City, said that over eighty comment forms were submitted by those who attended. “We were really happy with the turn out at the Public Art Consultation and were excited to see how positive the community was about participating in the process,” she said. “I think it’s very important to engage the community and allow them a forum to express their opinions.”
The initial request for proposals states that eligible artists must live within a 150 km radius of the city and the work should focus on the bridge linking Chinatown, Little Italy and Hintonburg. While all mediums of art were encouraged, design requirements from the call to artists put a heavy emphasis on light-based works attached to light poles. This might be why 4 of the 5 submissions being presented were variations on this idea.Notably, Ryan Stec’s MESH proposes 2-foot aluminum cubes with Electro luminescent wire woven in diverse patterns on the interior of the metal structure. The cubes would hang down from the tops of lamp posts and emit 3-dimensional forms of light that shift and morph as pedestrians walk past. As described in Stec’s proposal, “A mesh connects us all. We are not as autonomous as we believe, either as individuals or as communities. There may be an imagined division between us and others, but in reality we blend at the edges of one another. It is this overlap that makes us stronger, makes us brighter.”
Another strong proposal, noodle, submitted by Deborah Margo and Laura Taler, uses Dyneema® (the world’s strongest fibre) to create 3-dimensional “drawings” that would rest (much like nests) on seven lamp posts. Additionally, and using the same fibre, three large overhead structures would be built running both parallel and perpendicular to the bridge — to reference patterns of power lines from the surrounding urban landscape. When asked about the event, Margo said, “It was great to see children and adults attending. I couldn’t have asked for better. My understanding is that it was an unusually high turnout with great community response in the form of written comments as well. Two hours of constant talking was a lot, but I believe the two of us made ourselves (enthusiastically) available in representing our work and to community members. On a personal note, I was grateful for the artists being mutually supportive after a challenging process to get to this stage of the competition.”
The selection committee will be meeting this week to decide on the winning proposal. Stay tuned to find out which one it will be!
