It’s back to the drawing board for the Five Corners public art project.
The design proposal by TDH Experiential Fabricators known as “Meetcha at the 5” did not find favour with council and it was referred back for more discussion.
Art is always a very subjective thing, as several councillors pointed out at the Tuesday (March 16) council meeting.
The Five Corners Art project is going back to the public art advisory committee, after the comments around the table were mostly critical of the giant five design, for various reasons.
Coun. Chris Kloot questioned the $60,000 cost, even though the funds were already budgeted in the Five Corners Intersection project.
“I feel we are sending the wrong message,” he said about the expense during a pandemic, and later added he was happy to see it referred back for more information: “It needs to be the right choice and at the right time.”
Coun. Jason Lum acknowledged the challenge the public art committee faces, but felt it could be referred back to “personalize it more” since the “high profile” location merited something with more artistic value with meaningful text, made by an artist not a sign company.
Investing in something like this as a council, “we should all love it.”
Coun. Harv Westeringh, who sits on the public art committee noted it was “a little late in the game” to be switching gears. He pointed out there were four viable submissions, and they picked the best piece.
Coun. Jeff Shields said he didn’t like to second guess the committee’s recommendation but said the giant five reminded him of a “mallish” type work, and questioned it given the effort to bring back the heritage aspects to downtown.
Coun. Bud Mercer got “sticker shock” from the $60,000 price, adding he like the rest of council, had supported this proposal, but found it was kind of plain. “Maybe if it was cheaper. It just doesn’t do anything for me.”
After complaints about the cost, the timing, the non-art aspects, mallish type feel and more, Coun. Sue Knott, chair of the public art advisory committee took the reins and put council back on track.
As committee chair she proposed that council vote to refer it back to committee, and take the top three choices for another look. There were 10 submissions that came out of the request for proposals (RFP) process, six did not pass technical muster, leaving four viable options.
But council had already agreed on the $60,000 price as part of the Five Corners Intersection project, and it’s also an RFP that needed to be honoured, she said.
“I feel like due diligence is important,” Coun. Knott underlined but if it has to go back for retooling, so be it.
The scoring on the proposals will be set to zero, and the three top choices will be brought back to council for a decision at a future meeting.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
