For many Calgarians, our relationship with public art is much like Alberta’s relationship with Ottawa. Not exactly conjugal but we are quick to cash each other’s cheques.
Actually, big public art in Calgary, such as Wonderland, upped the heat, but the relationship cooled with Travelling Light and the Blue Ring.
Maybe we just need more time? Picasso gave a public sculpture to Chicago in 1967 and it soon became known as a baboon and worse. Years later, it is one of the most loved iconic symbols of Chicago.
Art is not a one-night stand.
Enough with the dating metaphor. Maybe we should start looking for public art in less familiar, less highbrow places. I appreciate galleries and comfortable museums. However, I believe there is an interesting new entry point for art: the back alley.
We are an international city and well served by the big, the professional and the expensive. Tim Knowles built a fine piece of public art that some mistake for a bridge in the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. It’s called Logjam and acts as a flood control structure, a bird blind and a spectacular piece of public art. Our urban village also unveiled a new Indigenous-themed mural on the Fair’s Fair wall, and a stunning mural farther down Music Mile. The Beltline Urban Mural Project is another fine example of the growing appreciation of art on walls, cement dividers and parking lots.
We also had a lovely village mural here but it disappeared. However, the gifted artist did not. Corinne Dickson painted the large mural of well-known Inglewood figures 18 years ago, honouring local CPR history. These days, she is adding street art into cement barrier work such as with the new Mercantile space in the old Farmer Jones lot.
However, I think her real breakthrough piece is a lovely mural in an alley.
I love back alleys. They felt a little outlaw when I was a kid. Today, when I take a stroll down a back alley, checking out gardens and old cars, I often get a stink eye from a neighbour thinking I am casing his yard and his priceless stuff, but I walk on.
Back alleys went up a few notches when I was inducted into the marvellous Inglewood Back Alley Bocce Boys. For 15 years now, bocce has been played, with heavily abused balls, down streets and alleys. It is played 52 weeks a year on Sunday afternoons at 30 C above or 30 below. It is a quirky half-sport (one that can be played with a beverage in hand). Playing the game in back alleys, streets and sometimes the river’s edge frees us from the constraints of playing fields, courts and rules.
The games end at Dave’s house, where he lives with his creative partner, Erika. Their garage is Beerlandia, and after bocce becomes a great hang. Not content to bring a sport into the back alleys, these two decided to bring art there as well. They hired the award-winning painter Dickson to paint their garage door with a mural. The fine piece of work has a ’60s music theme, which makes sense as Dave was at Woodstock when he was 16.
I am sure it’s not the first of its kind in Calgary, but as I watched it take form, I imagined more and more of this public art taking over alleys. I was struck by the freedom of it. How many Calgary citizens would be allowed to have a mural painted on their garage door? Would one of those new suburbs greet a mural on a front-facing garage door with a celebration and call for the whole street to get in on the artistic festival?
What I love about city life is seeing neighbours reaching out to express themselves creatively with a wonderful side dish of rebellion.
We should send out a citywide challenge.
Bob Chartier is an Inglewood resident who appreciates the unexpected.