Actually - nobody here has seen it yet; all we've had are photos of the post - in horizontal position -a heron supposedly is perched on and one computer image of a heron's head by itself. Heads or tails?
Even though one could have expected the ambassador's Cultural Commentary - "The heron has landed" - on the editorial page, Nelson Star, Aug. 19, to include a picture of her sighting - ironically we only got the now familiar one with the horizontal headless post and its creator smiling into the camera. Obviously - this Cultural Commentary was prompted by Ubiquitous Donna - with conveniently incomplete info on the heron-thing and a PR-job for the Cultural Development Commission (CDC) to make nice. Listing past achievements - instead of focusing on here/now - always seems a bit defensive to me.
The commentary takes off with "The heron sculpture, recently acquired for the cost of shipping and a tax receipt..." - but actually there is more. True - those are the initial costs, but then $6000 need to be found for a base to be constructed yet by the sculptor, and there are installation costs. City hall - in a blatant move to obfuscate - only says these costs will be "location-specific" here, after Kelowna's city council - doing its math transparently - had come up with said costs being somewhere between $40.000 and $50.000 - and rejecting the whole thing. This after those responsible for arts-doings in Kelowna had already said no to the piece, based on artistic considerations alone.
The suggestion that Heron's Landing may go to a developer in Nelson, who then will bear installation costs, is somewhat disingenuous. Surely this developer - developer who? - would want to be given at least some idea what these costs could be before agreeing to adopting the bird. And just as surely he would have to pay for an accurate estimate (engineering and all) Nelson's city council should have done initially. Not to forget that he would have to pay for the sculpture's base as well. Pigeon feed!
None of this irks me as much as where this "major piece of art" is coming from conceptually:
It was ordered by the Lake Placid developer - not so much as a piece of art for its own sake but as a sort-of flag-pole, announcing, identifying a condo development - Heron's Landing - proposed by the group for Kelowna. So the name and concept/construct were not magically born from an artist's creative womb - they were a specified commercial order. Name first! Then subject-matter.The sculptor was chosen because he was there there - in Kelowna.
And when the development fell through - people behind it tried to recoup costs for this post with the heron's head by flogging it off as a piece of art. In its own right.
With Nelson enthusiastically buying (into) it! And an executive member of the Nelson & District Arts Council calling it "a nice change".
Just in case you didn't know - we already have a bird on a post! A whole bird - iconic in this area and presented in its natural environment. The osprey sculpture by local artist Denis Kleine, on a wooden post, in the small bay next to the mall's parking-lot.
Day after posting the above.
The cultural ambassador, after opening her Cultural Commentary with -
"Controversy opens dialogue, and dialogue opens doors. A flap, so to speak, often precedes flight."
- asks me to be removed from this blog's mailing list.
Connect the dots!
Flap-flap-flap!
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