Art
Dundas Driving Park’s second public art installation progresses
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Five concrete bases or foundations have been poured along a path in Dundas Driving Park, the first step in completing the “Big Bounce” public art installation, originally planned for 2016. City staff say the project is still under budget despite delays.
City of Hamilton staff say the remaining $41,148 budget for a second Dundas Driving Park public art project will be enough to complete installation next year despite a six-year delay.
Five concrete bases for the long-planned “Big Bounce” were recently placed along a path in the middle of the park, each surrounded by orange fencing.
Public art manager Jeff Erbach’s update on the Dundas art installation, awarded to two British Columbia artists in 2015, to the city’s Arts Advisory Commission was postponed Sept. 27 when the committee meeting was cancelled due to technical issues with livestreaming. The committee’s next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 22.
City spokesperson Michelle Shantz said $103,952 of the $145,000 Driving Park project has been spent so far. Shantz did not say how much money is needed to complete remaining work and install it.
“No additional funds are being sought for the project,” Shantz said.
She said etching of images onto the artwork is still in progress, and once complete, the project can be installed. Staff are now targeting Spring 2023 for completion.
“The site plan is complete, and the foundation design and pouring of foundations is now finished in preparation for installation of the artwork,” Shantz said.
Originally scheduled for installation in 2016, “The Big Bounce” was proposed to feature five granite “balloons” that appear to be bouncing along the ground. Historic photos of the town of Dundas and the Dundas Driving Park were to be sandblasted into the granite.
Each of the five granite balloons were to be four feet high and six feet long, with two historic images on opposite sides of each balloon. They were each to be attached to two underground concrete foundations, measuring 36 by 36 inches and 24 by 24 inches.
A concept statement from artists Paul Slipper and Mary Ann Liu stated the goal was to create a sense of celebration and reflect on local history.
“Balloons are one of the most recognizable icons for celebrations in modern times,” the artists’ concept states. “They evoke memories of events such as sporting events, family picnics, parades, birthdays and happy occasions.”
Shantz said the city’s risk management staff participate in a technical review of permanent public art pieces at the adjudication stage to ensure they meet public safety concerns.
“At that early stage, before artwork is selected, artists have the ability to address any issues raised in the technical reviews,” she said.
Art
Art Bites: Millais's Muse Fell Ill After Posing for 'Ophelia' – artnet News
What’s the deal with Leonardo’s harpsichord-viola? Why were Impressionists obsessed with the color purple? Art Bites brings you a surprising fact, lesser-known anecdote, or curious event from art history. These delightful nuggets shed light on the lives of famed artists and decode their practices, while adding new layers of intrigue to celebrated masterpieces.
Beauty is pain. Elizabeth Siddal, one of art history’s most famous muses, had intimate experience with this adage. Siddal first met artist Walter Deverell in 1849, the year she turned 20, while working for a London milliner and soon became a favored model of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists. She was featured in William Holman Hunt’s A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids (1849–50) and most famously in John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1851–52). It was during her contribution to the latter painting, that she fell ill.
Beauty was a matter of pain for Millais, too. In a rare move for artists of the era, he spent five months painting scenery for Ophelia in a hut along Surrey’s Hogsmill River. “My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced,” Millais remarked, describing “muscular” flies and powerful winds. “The painting of a picture under such circumstances would be a greater punishment to a murderer than hanging.”
The Tate notes that Millais devoted only four months to portraying Ophelia herself. Siddal agreed to stand in for the doomed beauty. She spent long hours in a bathtub at the artist’s Gower Street studio, wearing a cheap gown Millais acquired. “Today I have purchased a really splendid lady’s ancient dress—all flowered over in silver embroidery,” he wrote. “It cost me, old and dirty as it is, four pounds.” The dress is still in the Tate.
Millais arranged oil lamps beneath Siddall’s tub to keep her bathwater warm. One of those lamps went out. Millais didn’t notice, and Siddal didn’t complain—by then she knew that beauty means pain. The water grew so frigid that Siddall fell ill with pneumonia. Siddall’s father ordered Millais to cover her extensive medical bills. The artist allegedly made off paying the least possible amount.
Siddal made a full recovery from her Ophelia-induced illness, but the bout proved foreshadowing. Siddall likely met Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti while they both sat for Deverell’s massive oil painting Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene IV (1850). Siddall fell for Rossetti, who made her his sole model. In 1853, Rossetti took Siddall on as an art student. He taught her to draw, and advised her to drop the last letter from her surname. By 1857, Siddal became one of the only women to exhibit alongside the Pre-Raphaelites. Over the next 15 years, she produced numerous drawings, paintings, and poems, often inspired by Lord Tennyson, her favorite poet since discovering his verses on a butter wrapping as a kid.
As time wore on, Siddal grew fearful that her philandering beau would abandon her for a younger muse. While Rossetti resisted their marriage due to Siddal’s working class background, the two wed in 1860. It wasn’t enough to stave off her consumptive melancholy. Siddal died from a laudanum overdose, a rumored suicide, in 1862—decades before 1894, when Ophelia was included the original Henry Tate gift. It’s one of the museum’s most popular paintings today, due in no small part to Siddal’s sublime beauty, the pain it brought her.
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Art
Striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers reach tentative deal with museum – Toronto Star
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TORONTO – The union representing hundreds of striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers says it’s reached a tentative deal with the museum.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union says they reached the deal late last night, after 16 hours of bargaining.
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Art
Striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers reach tentative deal with museum – The Globe and Mail
The union representing hundreds of striking Art Gallery of Ontario workers says it’s reached a tentative deal with the museum.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union says they reached the deal late last night, after 16 hours of bargaining.
The downtown Toronto museum has been closed for a month while more than 400 workers represented by OPSEU – including assistant curators, archivists and food and hospitality staff – were on strike.
They walked off the job after rejecting an offer from the AGO, which the union said failed to address key issues such as wage increases, protections for part-time workers and contracting out positions.
The union didn’t share details about their new tentative deal, which will soon go to a vote among the members, and the AGO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
No information was immediately available about when the AGO would reopen.
The union has previously said that part-time employees make up more than 60 per cent of the AGO’s work force, and they earn an average of $34,380 per year.
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