2009

16 October 2009 Artwork Helps Bridge the Past Lethbridge Alberta - They've crossed the river for 100 years.   Locomotives, freight, and passenger cars linked Lethbridge to the rest of the world.   But now wheels from those Canadian Pacific engines are perched above the valley, as part of the city's centennial celebration for the landmark High Level Bridge.   Oversized versions of those locomotive wheels, cast in aluminum, have become the latest addition to the city's public art installations.   Suzanne Lint, executive director of the Allied Arts Council, describes the three-piece work as the legacy part of the city's bridge centennial celebration.   Artist Ilan Sandler joined Lint and Mayor Bob Tarleck to introduce the work, "A Departure".   Its three driving wheels, commemorating three stages of railway technology, stand near a trail overlooking the Oldman River, just north of the Galt Museum.   The site, Tarleck pointed out, is historically significant as well as visually spectacular.   From the Sandler installation, viewers clearly see the mighty bridge as well as a massive artistic response, the University Hall design by acclaimed Canadian architect Arthur Erickson.   Looking to the past, the mayor said, viewers can envisage the historic First Nations battle on land which later became a focus of the coal-mining industry.   Long before human habitation, he added, today's river valley was part of a great inland sea.   Viewers must reflect on the objects and their location before understanding what they're saying, Tarleck added.   "The community will come to love and appreciate that," he said. "It just touches the right chord."   Sandler, winner of a Canada-wide competition for the Lethbridge-commissioned work, returned to the city earlier this month to supervise its installation.   Due to adverse weather, some landscaping remains to be completed.   The Halifax-based artist credited staff at the Galt Museum for assisting his research, which identified the Mikado steam engine - with its eight driving wheels - as a vital part of southern Alberta's transportation system for many decades.   A spoked driving wheel closest to the bridge represents the early 20th century, he said, when the Lethbridge span was completed.   A solid driver, much smaller, stands for the diesel-electric locomotives that replaced steam engines several generations later.   And the giant wheel at the centre of the work salutes the peak of steam power, when Canada's railways were at the heart of reconstruction programs as the nation recovered from the Second World War.   "While the bridge has remained constant in form and structure, its rails are a timeline marking milestones in rail technology," Sandler explains. "By installing the three wheels on different inclined angles, they enter into a visual interplay depicting dramatic changes in train wheel design since the bridge's completion."   The $140,000 creation, commissioned by city council in collaboration with the Allied Arts Council and the Downtown Lethbridge Business Revitalization Zone, is Sandler's first in Western Canada.   Some of his earlier works of public art have been installed in New York, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and South Korea.   A new work, incorporating a water feature, opened earlier this year in Toronto and a second work will be installed in that city in 2011.   Lethbridge is already home to a variety of noted public art pieces, Sandler pointed out. "Moses," first shown at Expo 67 in Montreal, has been part of the university's fine arts centre for many years. And "Western Channel," by Western Canadian sculptor John McEwan, guards the patio north of the arts centre.   Dave Mabell.

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