Published: September 21, 2014
A fluid series of public art installations have taken over the city of Vancouver’s bus shelters, along Granville Street in the Marpole commercial district.
The Meniscus Series, presented in the seven Marpole bus shelters along Granville Street (from 63rd Street to SW Marine Drive), was commissioned by chART: Public Art Marpole, a public art research project by Dr. Cameron Cartiere, of Emily Carr University of Art + Design. The research is supported in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). Meniscus was completed in collaboration with the Marpole Business Improvement Association and the City of Vancouver’s Integrated Graffiti Management Program, and CBS/JCDecaux.
The Meniscus Series is based on a photography series by artist Nathalie Lavoie. The works depicts two bodies of water merging: fresh water from the Mackenzie River as it is dropped into the salty waters of the Pacific Ocean. By mixing these specific waters, the artist is referencing her own experience of moving back and forth between her home along the river in the Northwest Territories and Emily Carr University on Granville Island while she pursued her Masters Degree. This movement between the two waters challenged her sense of place, her understanding of site, and what it means to carry history from one location to another.
The scientific term “meniscus” refers to the curved surface of a liquid in a container. In this series of macroscopic photographs, one type of water is dropped into a container of another type, thus disrupting the meniscus and making it impossible to accurately read the measurement. As the two waters mix, the transformation alters the solutions in a process that is simultaneously creative and destructive. These photographs makes visible the transformation, capturing the moment at which it is most noticeable but not measurable.
The development of the 2014 bus shelter wrap series in Marpole stems from the creation of a single temporary bus shelter wrap in August, 2012. The work, Cloud Coordinate, by Elisa Yon and Felicia Gail responded to a decommissioned shelter on the corner of Granville & 71st. The bus shelter was slated for removal and taken off the maintenance schedule; however there was an extensive delay in the actual demolition and over time the appearance of the shelter deteriorated, with peeling vinyl, scratched glass, and graffiti. chART: Public Art Marpole, with Emily Carr University of Art + Design graduate students, turned the structure into a temporary public artwork. Though the piece was only up for six months, at which point the shelter was dismantled, the response from the community was overwhelmingly positive. With this in mind, chART chose to pursue a new wrap project, this time on a larger scale, and the Meniscus Series was born.
chART: Public Art Marpole is a long-term research partnership between the community of Marpole and Dr. Cameron Cartiere of Emily Carr University of Art + Design. chART aims to support public art and community engagement through creativity and innovation. The project’s research focuses on the sustainable cultural, environmental, social, and economic impact of public art within a community.
Contact chART: Phone / 604 440 0707 Email / chart@ecuad.ca Twitter / @chARTmarpole Facebook / Chart: Public Art Marpole