Bearing the gift of art: Sydney couple turns yard into inspiring — and illuminating — display – SaltWire Network

SYDNEY — Artist Susie Oram-Aylward loves dad jokes and Jordan Strong is an outdoor enthusiast and avid fisherman. So, when the couple turned their yard into a special art installation, they naturally came up with “We Will Bear Through This Together” — a glowing polar bear lounging on a bench while casting for plastic fish that are dangling from tree branches.

“We just wanted to give people a little something to smile at these days when it’s been pretty dark,” Oram-Aylward said of the display they light up each night weather allows at their home on the corner of Cottage Road and Woodill Street in south end Sydney.

“Both of us really love puns and we wanted to find a way to offer a slogan of support while also adding a dad joke in it.”

Strong said the installation is made up entirely of things they found around the house.

The bear is made of clear plastic water bottles and chicken wire they used for the beans in their garden last year. The fish are blue bottles they had collected from people around neighbourhood before the pandemic, the waves are fashioned from marine debris, and the sign with the message “We Will Bear Through This Together” is an old painting they repurposed and adorned with cardboard flowers. And it’s all lit up by strings of LED lights Oram-Aylward had used in past projects.

It’s all part of a nationwide art initiative by Sustainable Thinking and Expression on Public Space, or STEPS, a charitable group that is responsible for some of the biggest murals and community-led art projects in public spaces in Canada. Oram-Aylward and Strong were one of six groups chosen from across the country to turn their house into an art installation as a way to bring artists and communities together during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While some of the other projects included theatre and modern dance performances, Oram-Aylward said they decided a nighttime display would give people an excuse to go for a walk and maybe chat with their neighbours.

“We just thought having a light-up installation here would be a way to encourage people to walk around our neighbourhood,” she said.

“It was really fun to do. I really love the idea of having any sort of installation and I like seeing people walk by and smile. I like seeing cars stopping and taking pictures of it. One of the saddest things I’ve noticed throughout this pandemic is in a community that is as tight-knit as ours, all of a sudden we’re not making eye contact when we walk by each other. There’s this level of fear. I really hope that through art installations such as this we can kind of break the ice and get back to some level of normalcy in terms of remembering to be human to one another.”

Strong said he enjoyed working on a project that could cheer some people up at a time when many are feeling stressed out.

“Everything has been so hard lately with the virus — there’s so much going on right now — so it was nice to be able to build a project that people could see and it might bring a smile to their face. Even though things are tough, sometimes the difference between a good day and a bad day is just having something to laugh at,” he said.

“I’ve seen a lot of smiles. I’ve had a lot of people walk by when we were out in the yard puttering around with the dog or gardening, they’d say ‘Hey, I really love it and it made me laugh.’ We’ve actually gotten to meet five or six people just from around our block who we see but never really get to say howdy to. It’s kind of nice. We’ve met quite a few people just in our neighbourhood, which is awesome — and it’s kind of the point of the project, really.”

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