Chinook…

For me Canmore is three elements: the Rock, the Water and the Wind. All offering movement. All powerful gifts of nature. We benefit from these elements every day each in our own personal way by choosing to live in Canmore.

The project I am presenting to you speaks of the movement and cycles of nature in its simplest form: a ribbon in the wind, a life cycle with a beginning and an end.

At a quick glance…

There are multiple elements in my project that relate to these principles: the base of the sculpture is inspired by trees in the wind, the ribbon is white to express purity, the shape relates to the movement of wind or water… and this all comes from a simple shape originally created by 10 fingers playing with paper…

An invitation to explore the paths along the river

To find the location for my sculpture, I did what a good Canmorite has to: I took my bike out and went for a ride on the great paths around town. When I found the site I am suggesting, I had the clear image in my head that this was where the sculpture belonged.

The chosen location offers majestic views of the rock peaks of the Three Sisters and Ha Ling summits, but above all, would combine the presence of the river with the sculpture. It can be seen from the bridges (car & pedestrian) and it would be overlooking the Bow River in the middle of a pre-established resting spot where two benches are already installed.

One other main reason I chose this location is that it would be only pedestrian accessible and this is very important for me: I want to incite the viewers to get out of their cars and take an enjoyable route along the river to get a closer look at the sculpture.

How did Chinook emerge?

Starting with concepts of movement, strength, simplicity and cycles, I created an array of different paper models and chose the most expressive shape from them. It was important for me to play with the matter before coming up with a final concept. I think that to conceptualize a sculpture, it is imperative to work in three dimensions and have a sense of proportions to imagine the real size.

My first idea was to keep the structure low and allow people to walk around the loops, but I had to consider the potential vandalism danger. So I decided to raise the ribbon and added the element of the tree-like posts to the structure to make it harder to climb and access with a can of spray paint or any damaging tools. It also gives much more of a feeling of movement to the sculpture to be held by diagonal lines fastened to a central point.

From the green summer to a black and white winter…

While wanting to keep the purity of the white paper from which the sculpture concept emerged, I also wanted to make the best choice of colours. People who know me well would expect me to create something colorful and they would be right under the following condition: if the project was indoor and installed against a wall…

But this isn’t the case. I created a shape that would be surrounded by the emerald colour of the Bow River, the green and yellows of the trees, the browns and grays of the rock, and the blue of the sky. So while trying to decide on a colour or texture selection, something always pulled me back to using pure white because of the interesting gray contrasts that would be created by the play of light over the folds of the sculpture. In the wintertime, the sculpture will be distinct from the background because it is a large mass against the smaller white shapes created by snow on the trees or the mountains.

I also wanted to accentuate the twisting shape of the sculpture. To do this, I needed to put an element on one side of the ribbon which would flow and disappear with the folds of the ribbon. This is where the idea of the poem was introduced. This contemplation item will be available only to the pilgrims who will walk to the sculpture and take a closer look and follow the twisting path of the poem through the sculpture; it will be a little reward for them…

Coming from a small community in Quebec, I grew up in a french environment and I always wrote a journal of poetry since I was 16 and fighting against a severe kidney disease. In the same years I was introduced to the poetry of Jacques Prevert and others. I was stunned by the power of simple words and the fact that the rhymes are secondary to the choice of words. This simplicity and power is what I am trying to bring to the poem I wrote which will be hand-painted (in both French and English) along the twisting form of the sculpture.