Trades bring public art to a new level

You know you’re working with the right people when you arrive at their shop with nothing to show for your sculpture idea but some vague sketches and they don’t frog-march you out of the industrial park.

My idea is for a giant version of a severed fiber-optic cable — but it should also look vaguely like a thruster-cluster thing. And I’d also like to hint at those giant tunnel borers and massive industrial fans. Somewhere in there. 

I don’t know where to begin to try to communicate all this to industrial welders so my burly cousin with a lifetime in the forestry industry opens a door and before long I’m thankful to be pitching my idea to Manaen Senkow, of Select Steel, whose grandfather John Senkow built the decorative railings at the historic Minoru Chapel in Richmond as well as other metal fixtures that helped revamp Steveston. 

I tell him it should be a bunch of brightly-coloured, random-length, angle-cut tubes made of some shiny, rust-proof metal. Which should be spaced apart somehow so you could see between the tubes. Which will be hoisted up at the end of the Canada Line in downtown Richmond. And, by ‘will’ I mean, ‘may be’, if this City of Richmond public art project doesn’t fall through.

I bring along a snarl of fiber-optic wiring in my purse, like rosary beads.

And Manaen, who I’m told does a lot of sketching and designing himself, says yes. All do-able. Then the long collaborative process begins.

This isn’t my first time working with metal fabricators — my last project relied on the welding skills of upcycling specialist Noah Goodis — but this would be a small, potentially pain-in-the-ass job at a bustling shop serving the West’s primary industries. It all comes down to having faith that people who work with their hands in all crafts like to innovate and stretch their skills. 

Fast-forward several months, to  overnight last night (at this writing) when another team of trades gets in on the project, this one in the hoisting of massive sculptures into place. Enter Jeff Morris of Pro-Tech Industrial Movers, who finds the prospect of swinging nearly 1,000 pounds of plate aluminum up onto the end of the last guideway at Brighouse Station “simple.” 

He was right. And right on time, too.

My faith in the trades in the collaborative process is confirmed.

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City as Site, a survey exhibition of Richmond’s public art, continues at Richmond Art Gallery (five minutes’ walk from Canada Line’s Brighouse Station, now with newly installed Cluster) to Oct. 26. Public art bus tour: Sept. 27, 1:15-3:30 pm, with public art specialist Dr. Cameron Cartiere and special guest artist Andrea Sirois. RSVP required: [email protected] or 604-247-8313.