The city's newest piece of public art was unveiled last Thursday, much to the relief of its two co-creators.
Bella Totino and Verne Busby, two local artists with a longstanding artistic process and creative enterprise in Riel Park, worked long and hard over the summer to make our nature, our place a reality.
"I think Bella and I have had perhaps collectively about seven days off since then," Busby remarked to the crowd of arts enthusiasts and civic officials assembled on the unseasonably gorgeous 30C afternoon.
The work is now a permanent fixture on the southwest facing wall of Beaudry Place located at 50 Bellerose Dr. It's home to city offices for some RCMP staff, as well as recreation and parks, and Family and Community Support Services.
The image measures in at just greater than 23 square metres in three sections. There are two sections on the left of the building's face forming the main image. It shows the silhouette of a majestic heron standing in the shallows near the shore of Big Lake amid the cattails and the reeds, a pike firmly set in its bill, and a small formation of geese flying overhead.
The last column standing on its own on the right features a complementary image of a jackfish worming around underwater. The total weight of the project is about 907 kilograms.
The 4.8 metre-high multi-panel mural, the city's first exterior mosaic, is comprised of about 50,000 three-quarter-inch vitreous glass tiles (called tesserae) from Italy and Japan. They were chosen specifically for their variety of colours, their saturation and durability. Both Busby and Totino said they expect this project to last for many years.
"It was a delight to work with the material. In this day and age, everything is so instant; it's plastic and it's stuck up," Busby said. "This is going to be here for a long, long time."
"The execution of it was kind of overwhelming but the creation of it, the idea and all that, was really fun," Totino added. "It looks great! It was really a challenge, just the size and the timeline, but we learned a ton. We know stuff we never knew before."
Inspired work
From their studio space near the edge of Big Lake, the mouth of the Sturgeon River and Lois Hole Provincial Park, Totino and Busby get to watch the seasons come and go, flora and fauna right outside their windows. Busby said they spend a lot of time in the natural environment, mostly thanks to their two dogs.
"It's our daily walks with them that inspired us to spend a lot of time looking at the flora and fauna around us," he said.
Totino came up with the design. Once they were awarded the contract from the city, they immediately set to work although it took several days for all of the packages of tiles to arrive in the mail.
"When you're working in glass and stone, everything takes time to set," Busby said.
Kelly Jerrott, director of cultural services, described how the initiative fulfils several key objectives of the city's cultural master plan.
"Public art projects such as this one are opportunities for artists and St. Albert residents to celebrate cultural assets, share ideas and to grow our community."
The artwork is the first realization of the new percent for public art policy that sees the city setting aside 0.5 to 1 per cent of funding for all new civic buildings, major restorations or building projects to further the acquisition of public art. This project was valued at $50,000.
