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Community Art

© Traute Klein, biogardener

Spirit Park is a community garden in Winnipeg, less than a block away from the world's longest street, Portage Avenue. Art City is a free community drop-in for artists from age 10 to 100, just a minute away from Spirit Park. In August 2005, Art City asked Vancouver artist Bruce Walther to come to facilitate the building of a sculpture in Spirit Park which the whole community could help to create. For 14 full days, children and adults learned the art of mosaic sculptures by first making test pieces. Then, we designed and made pieces for the outdoor sculpture.

A contractor had already made a concrete dome in the centre of the garden, and Bruce Walther cut patterns on which we made individual pieces which were later cemented onto the dome. This article is a pictorial documentation of the project. It was dedicated on September 24, 2005.

The theme of the sculpture shows the sun giving life to all created things on the earth: people, animals, and plants. Some of the animals depicted are a turtle, a cat, a bird, and the owl which I made. That owl is rather pretty, I think. It even has eyelashes. One of the pictures shows some of the produce of the community garden: a pumpkin, corn, carrots, and a sunflower. Right beside it are some flying insects which I filled in at the end to complement the picture.