Jury's in on Esplanade sculpture

By cgallant

Created 17/03/2010 - 12:46am

Front Page Top Story Amanda Stephenson

Contemplative installation selected to grace Heritage and Art Centre's front lawn

It might make you think of angel wings, of life and death, of the changing of the seasons. Or it might not -- and Blake Senini is fine with that. "As in all my work, I really don't set out to give a specific meaning to the work," says the Calgary-based artist, whose proposed sculpture Turn Turn Turn (a Resting Place) has been selected by a jury as a piece of public art to be located on the lawn of Medicine Hat's Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre.

"It's really just for contemplation."

A model of Senini's proposed work was unveiled at city council Monday night. The sculpture will consist of shiny cast-aluminum wings heaped in a stack, on top of a polished black cement base. It will be 14 feet across at the base, two feet high, and 10 feet wide. Turn Turn Turn was chosen as the winner out of five proposals received for the commission, a partnership between the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre. The Alberta Foundation of the Arts board has approved a three-year grant totaling $150,000 for the project, and the sculpture will be part of their permanent collection but located as a long-term installation on the Esplanade grounds.

A committee of six local, regional and national jurors, including representatives from the Alberta Foundation of the Arts and the Esplanade, reviewed the proposals at the end of January. All of the proposals were on display in the second floor lobby of the Esplanade earlier this winter.

Joanne Marion, curator of art for the Esplanade, said she and the other jury members found Senini's proposal very attractive. "Visually, we felt it was an uplifting piece of work," she says. "We also were really interested in the fact that the base of the sculpture is intended as seating. This was unique among all the proposals -- that there was an opportunity for people to come up and interact with it." Senini -- who teaches at the Alberta College of Art and Design -- has works in the collections of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, the Governor General of Canada Art Collection, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Calgary Civic Art Collection, the Glenbow Museum, the Art Gallery of Alberta and the University of Victoria. However, he has never created a permanent, outdoor installation before, and says he feels "a little overwhelmed" to be chosen for the Medicine Hat commission.

"That's what's exciting to me about this," Senini says. "It gives me the opportunity to work with different materials and on a more permanent basis."

Senini will be working on the sculpture over the next year, with installation planned for the spring of 2011.