The art installation THE HIVE was being put up on Woodbine Beach late last week as part of Winter Stations 2022. Photo by Alan Shackleton.
The 2022 Winter Stations art installations on Woodbine Beach officially launch on Family Day, Monday, Feb. 21.
After not being able to put the installations up Woodbine Beach last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this winter is a go.
The six installations for this year will be on the beach from Feb. 21 to March 31.
Winter Stations began in 2015 as a way to highlight the beauty of the Eastern Beaches and make them a destination point for outdoor art installations during the winter. The artworks are set up at the lifeguard stations along Woodbine Beach, and each year an international competition receives entries connected to that year’s Winter Stations’ theme.
The theme for this year was Resilience.
Winter Stations was first launched by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates and Curio in 2015. Over the years it has become immensely popular with both local residents and visitors to the Beach. Sponsors for Winter Stations 2022 are The Beach BIA, Minto Communities, Sali Tabacchi Branding and Design, Meevo Digital, RioCan, Demirov, Bara Group, Urban Capital and Waterfront Shores Partners, consisting of Cityzen Group, Tercot Communities, Greybrook Realty and the City of Hamilton.
The winning designs for this year are:
ENTER-FACE by MELT (Cemre Onerturk and Ege Cakir, Turkey)
The times of pandemic have changed our habits in multi-scalar aspects, but it especially affected the way of how we perceive the world outside of us. More explicitly, it shifted our communication with people, interaction with the environment and the perception of our experiences by means of a single surface: the digital screen. Via offering the isolated a new version of coexistence, these screens not only made overcoming this challenging period possible but also became indissociable parts of lives as mobile “interfaces”. The project “enter-face” aims to reveal the dramatic influence of these screens, therefore, presents a spatial atmosphere that brings people together by means of a common visionimage while isolating them physically. It proposes two dark boxes with distant holes for people to get their upper bodies inside and stay detached from one another. Within the boxes, a textured transparent surface is placed through which the distant visitors, who became a group of viewers now, watch the life outside the box as if they are spectating a never ending moving-image on a screen together.
Wildlife-guard Station (Mickael Minghetti, with the guidance of Andres Jimenez Monge, France and Canada)
Inspired by the northern cardinal bird – a specie present all-year round in Ashbridge’s Bay Park – the station seeks to engage the visitors with Toronto’s wildlife. The diversity of species taking refuge in the dense urban environment is both remarkable to observe, and critical to preserve.
THE HIVE (Kathleen Dogantzis and Will Cuthbert, Canada)
The resilience witnessed among communities in the face of challenging and unprecedented times is paralleled among the honey bee. Honey bee colonies are primary composed of worker bees whose greatest measure of resilience is maintaining hive temperature throughout the cold winter months. This is achieved by adapting worker behaviour to use energy from stored honey to generate body heat within a tight hive cluster. The challenge of keeping the hive warm is met by a colony level response – much like the collaborative community level response that is mounted in the face of adversity.
The installation is designed with a hexagonal structure reminiscent of a honey bee colony, and it highlights the colour variation of honey, which is the result of diverse floral resources. Individuals are welcomed to experience the visual diversity of a honey bee hive and work together to form a collaborative community level hive cluster.
S’winter Station (Evan Fernandes, Kelvin Hoang, Alexandra Winslow, Justin Lieberman, and Ariel Weiss, led by Associate Professor Vincent Hui, Ryerson University’s Department of Architectural Science)
The forces of nature are relentless. Like the falling snow of the sky and the shifting sands of the beach, the pavilion embraces local wind, snow, and sun conditions. Following these directions of force, the pavilion’s wings embody movement by harnessing snow and mitigating strong winds. Beach towels have been formed into dynamic concrete panels with varying openings. These panels control the amount of light and snow allowed to enter, while also creating unique views outwards. Together, the panels and wings protect users and encourage them to engage with their surroundings. Where the lifeguard station, beach towels, and marine ropes are more frequently used in the summer, the pavilion achieves resilience by employing these objects in the winter. The pavilion acts as a shelter for the community where winter conditions are celebrated by harnessing and adapting to natural forces.
Introspection (Christopher Hardy, Tomasz Weinberger, Clement Sung, Jason Wu, Jacob Henriquez, Christopher Law, Anthony Mattacchione, George Wang, Maggie MacPhie and Zoey Chao, led by Associate Professor Fiona Lim Tung, University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design)
In keeping with this year’s theme of resilience, we chose to base our design on the emotions felt throughout the past two years’ worth of quarantine and isolation. Playing with the idea of reflection, we utilize mirrored walls to cast the visitors as the subjects of our bright red pavilion, titled Introspection. While the trellis roof allows the sun to illuminate the interior and its visitors, the red lifeguard tower stands unyielding in the centre of the pavilion, reminding us of the inherent stability within us. In highlighting the subject’s presence, we hope to promote introspection into one’s own emotional resilience as one faces their own reflection. From afar, Introspection appears to float on the beach’s horizon. Behaving like a visual constant in the wild, Introspection and the lifeguard towers remind us that no matter what the whirlwinds of life may bring, they endure it all and remain resilient to adversity.
One Canada (Alex Feenstra, Megan Haralovich, Zhengyang Hua, Noah Tran, Haley White and Connor Winrow, led by Assistant Professor Afshin Ashari, University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Design and Rural Development)
The Indigenous Peoples in Canada are an inspirational example of resilience due to their ability to withstand adversity and persevere through generations of oppressive colonial policies. Historic injustices persist, including the effects of cultural genocide from the residential school system of Canada. Here we symbolize bridging the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples through gathering. Accomplished through the support of the seven grandfather teachings, represented by the seven rings of the installation, that originated with the Anishnabae Peoples, passed down through generations that ensures the survival of all Indigenous Peoples: Wisdom, Love, Respect, Bravery, Honesty, Humility, and Truth. Orange represents the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, and the reality that the support of non-Indigenous Peoples, as Indigenous Peoples assert rights to self-determination, will strengthen relations and begin to redress the historic wrongs. Orange is displayed in the ropes where the pattern pays homage to the creation of drums, where the ropes were weaved to honour culture. The installations flow towards the lifeguard stand reinforces the strengthening of the relationship and that the protection of Canada hinges on the unity between peoples. We aim to symbolize movement to a new relationship, one based on mutual respect that honours Indigenous treaties and rights. The road forward is long and nonlinear, but we commit to take the journey together.
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.
