Monday 3 April 2017

Public Art on Hall - Really?
















When the "Stores-to-Shores" project was announced - "public art" was one 
of the bells and whistles promised on the way down to the lake.

But all we have is a redo of the mural on the PHARMASAVE wall - between Baker and Vernon. There since Oct. 2001 - redone in 2014.  
The original: water, rocks, trees, fishing from an indigenous boat and flat round faces in the shrubbery. Creatively awkward and rather colorless (no greens, blues), it was endearingly earnest - we were used to it. As a whole easily forgettable, forgotten.





The redo is a mish-mash of 3 styles. 2 are Brian McLachlan's own in the very left and very right sections, and 1 - the center: marginally more successful, not necessarily local-sourced - is large-scale digital reproductions of old photos.
Like lumberjacks whacking at old-growth trees, which the white man actually hardly saw here, what with the wildfire of the 1850s burning down everything in the area. 


 


The very left section still is a part of the original, in his #1 style. The very right section - in style #2, themed local-arts-and-culture - potentially is the most attention-getting. Partly because it is in several colors - the other sections' are rather monochromatic and old-photo sepia - and definitely because the people represented here all appear so uniformly grotesque.

Grotesque - because the painter - obviously oblivious - has absolutely no talent for painting people. This may sound harsh, but - no, I'm not sorry! - there they embarrassingly are! On a very large public(ly funded?) wall.




The Cultural Development Committee (CDC) could have taken the opportunity in 2014 - when the mural was damaged - to call the whole thing off and look at a new one altogether, more in tune creatively with out-of-town today. Instead of letting McLachlan - a minor local talent - loose one more time, unchecked (and financed?).
Let's face it - at that time he had had a good run of about 13 years with his oeuvre. So - was this an obligatory polite, feeling-sorry-for-him nod, or was the CDC simply obtuse.

For an historical mural - Trail's could have inspired. Yes - Trail's!





Ironically - Stephanie Fischer, CDC Chair, also runs the Capitol Theatre, the framework of McLachlan's arts-and-culture representation. But this section is poor advertising for her Capitol specifically - and not at all exemplary of how her CDC wants tourists to perceive us arts-and-culture jocks - period.
Yet there it is: she/they should have known (and decided) better!

Good enough is not good enough!

The mural - in its mostly dull shades and partly obscured by trees - has been there so long: nobody stops to look. I hadn't been aware of the redo until recently - and I'm a very visual person, usually seeing all around me.

Like - for instance - the 7 new, surely very expensive waste-bins in this single block of Hall: 4 at Hall/Baker and 3 at Hall/Vernon. Used by nobody and all too close to tiny natural settings they promptly overpower visually. 
Oh, Public Works!

Then there are the latest 2 Nelson Hydro boxes, across from the mural. All downtown cross-streets have them, most go on-and-on about the wonderfulness of Nelson Hydro, and most are wrapped in dirty-green camouflage-variations. There's no joy in them, and enough already: all we need to know and do know is that Nelson Hydro is running our show. Some at its top among the highest earners at corporate City Hall.



 
One of these boxes is about Mayor Maglio, seemingly part of the Hydro thing. I didn't read his story. But we know the Maglios have been doing extremely well for themselves around Nelson: most recently - be still, my heart! - as the road-construction contractor of Stores-to-Shores Phase 1 - namely Hall St.
Now with Maglio's Hydro box on it!
Is it just me, or ...!

Will Alex Love be next with his very own box? 

I digress!

  


Back to grotesque people. When a CDC meeting - some time ago - discussed murals for Nelson: it was agreed that painted outdoor-murals generally only have a limited life-expectancy. I was there.

So - with the Hall revamp needing a reason for being - beyond free parking, pipes in the ground and a place to put lots and lots of new, surely very expensive waste-bins: how about a taking-your-breath-away mural on the PHARMASAVE wall!

Consciously planned, designed - and executed within parameters contractually established prior to! By someone out-of-town with an exceptional proven track-record.

That and all Nelson Hydro boxes wrapped colorfully and telling different stories of common interest: taken-on as public-art projects.
Unless Nelson Hydro just won't have any of that!



Luis Seven Martins - l7m



"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, 
and that is not being talked about."
                                                                  Oscar Wilde







Stephanie Fischer, CDC Chair
sfischer@netidea.com

Valerie Warmington, City Councillor/CDC Member
vwarmington@nelson.ca

Anna Purcell, City Councillor/Alternate CDC Member
apurcell@nelson.ca

Pam Mierau, Manager - Development Services
pmierau@nelson.ca

Colin Innes, Director - Public Works
cinnes@nelson.ca

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