A major piece of public art once planned for Highway 97 North disappeared last year after criticism from city councillors.
One main complaint about the proposed $250,000 sculpture, which featured 10 human figures perched atop tall poles, was that its beauty and grace would be lost by being placed next to the busy highway with all its speeding cars.
Coun. Gail Given suggested last November that artist Ted Fullerton’s proposed sculpture should have been located in pedestrian-friendly City Park where people could better relate to its scale and take pictures of themselves beside it.
Fast forward to Wednesday, when much secrecy was woven into a press release issued by the Kelowna Art Gallery about a “large new outdoor public art sculpture” about to be unveiled next to the building on Water Street.
“No announcements will have been made via any Gallery communications before the media preview event,” art gallery spokesman Joshua Desnoyers wrote in an email invitation to attend the event.
Feverish media minds, or one of them anyway, wondered if the about-to-unveiled sculpture was a revival of Fullerton’s ill-fated piece, which was conceived as a new ‘Welcome to Kelowna’ sign.
“I can confirm that it is not a sculpture by Ted Fullerton, although that is a very astute guess,” Desnoyers wrote in an email.
So media, and all of Kelowna, will have to wait until 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 27 to get a look at the sculpture, described as having been made by “an established artist whose work has been shown throughout North America and who has received major commissions in Canada and the U.S.”
Kelowna currently has more than 70 pieces of public art. The newest, whatever it is, will be located between two of the most photographed sculptures, ‘Rhapsody’, a representation of playful dolphins at the entrance to Waterfront Park, and ‘Bear’ , a representation of a bear, in Stuart Park.
Whatever happened to plans for a new Welcome to Kelowna sign on Highway 97 North also remains a bit of a mystery as calls to relevant authorities at City Hall were unreturned Wednesday.
