A sculpture nearly seven stories high will be placed on St. Patrick’s Island this summer, the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation announced on Tuesday.
The piece, titled Bloom and created by Montreal-born artist Michel de Broin, is an assembly of street lights that will be visible from the downtown.
“I was interested in taking something from the city, like street lights, that are normally vertical against a horizontal … and breaking those verticals by creating an oblique that breeds a natural element,” said de Broin. “It looks like flowers, or blooming. The lights pointing in all directions propose paths, or a way of looking at the island. It creates a centre.”
The artwork is one of the final phases of a two-year revitalization project for St. Patrick’s Island. Susan Veres, the corporation’s vice-president of marketing and communications, said it was important to stick to the public’s preference for only a “light touch” of development on the island.
“It’s seven tonnes, but it’s a light piece because it very gently touches the earth on three points and you can get underneath,” she said.
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Canadian artist Michel de Broin’s work Bloom is seen in this rendering, on the right. The 23-metre-tall sculpture is made of street lights put together to represent a towering flower. It’s set to be installed on St. Patrick’s Island in time for the park’s reopening this summer. Rendering Courtesy CMLC
Veres noted that the sculpture is also literally a light, and therefore makes the park safer for later hours. It was also designed to be flood-resistant, with its metal tripod base anchored nearly two metres underground with cement.
“It is very, very well encased,” Veres said.
De Broin’s proposal was selected from a shortlist of six Canadian artists picked by a local consulting team. Bloom, budgeted at $500,000, is being assembled in the Toronto area with the help of engineers and welders.
De Broin, who has created large-scale public works all over the world, hopes to have the piece finished and ready to be transported to Calgary in mid-June.
Even after setbacks caused by the June 2013 floods, Veres said the development as a whole is on schedule and looks “beautiful.”
The land corporation hopes to open the St. Patrick’s Island Park to the public at the end of July or beginning of August, weather permitting.
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