Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Art Installation in downtown Edmonton

Yesterday morning when I biked to work - this installation was not up, but a wonderful surprise to the people whom pass this corner of Edmonton was to find this:













The large panels and all the hearts are fabric, the larger panels have heart cut outs that were hand stitched on the edges. Each of the fabric hearts were cotton fabric - I did not see any duplicates and the front and back fabric were all different. 
People were invited write their own advise on the provided tags. Extra tags and pencils were in a pouch in the centre of the fence that had the hearts and as you can see from the pic - there were many already attached and ready. 
I am unsure if the creator of the piece was hoping that the participints would take a heart - but I think that may have been the case as each one is on a large safety pin with beads.
It rained last night and I was worried the installation would be ruined, but it looked unharmed this morning when I rode past. It rained again tonight - right after work - by the time I got home, I looked like a drowned rat! 

OK, you cannot tell from these pics, but my clothing is WET and my hair was poker straight when I left this morning and has gone all curly from the rain. Boo. 
I hope the installation still looks OK, perhaps I will write up another tag and pick out a heart for my backpack tomorrow.


Have any of you even set up an installation? I love this one on the corner of downtown Edmonton - it is not a good area of town and to see this lovely work of art - well, it made my heart swell. I could not believe how many people all stopped even in the short time frame that I was there, to take pictures and check it out. I talked to every person that came up. Everyone loved it and seemed as in awe as myself to see something so fabulous on what is usually such a sad corner.


For those of you that know Edmonton, this corner is by the downtown police station, on the corner that used to have the York Hotel that was torn down. This building for those of you that do not know Edmonton, this was a scary place. They even had multiple signs that boasted that you had to leave your knives outside. Eek! 


If any of you have done something like this, or seem something similar - please leave me a comment, I would love to hear all about it.
Cheers,
Carolyn


**Note - this was added the day after this post when live.
I was showing this post to Mr Hunter and I saw the picture where it clearly states to take a heart if you leave a tag. Funny - I took all the pics and without out reading the sign, knew to leave a note, guessed I should take a heart - all I had to do was read the sign! Silly me!
I got a heart this morning on my way to work. 
Cheers,
Carolyn

4 comments:

  1. I've never heard of such an idea, but it looks fabulous. I hope it survived the rains.

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  2. This is so cool -- we need something like that here! :)

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  3. too cool -- the pics were worth the drenching...

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  4. Hi-we did this on our estate in Hackney...we asked the community ...all the children what they wanted in their village green...can send you photos if you like Its was a great way to find out what people wanted :)

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