Oh what art wood do.
James Miller looked into the heartwood of the city, when the 2015 Canada Winter Games asked for artists to apply their talents to the Prince George Airport. His visual ideas were not the ones chosen for the eventual image installed on the walls at YXS but he was already climbing the creative tree, so to speak, and he had to get to the top.
His eventual finished work was unveiled this week on the Willow Cale Forest Service Road, where he first got the idea for what would become The Spirit Of Prince George 2015, a two-panel combination of painting and sculpture. It is mounted on three beams at the entrance to Timberspan Wood Products, the very spot the key mental sparks flew.
"The call for the airport mural is what got me going," said multi-media artist Miller. "I was thinking about different ideas, I had some images in mind, and I was doing a lot of driving around and I had never even been on this road before [Willow Cale FSR] but I spotted this beautiful pile of wood [at Timberspan] and as I was there kind of inspired by this wood, the owner happened to come by, so we started talking."
Timberspan, owned by Joseph Cvenkel, specializes in Douglas fir lumber and custom sawing. The red-tinted fir wood gave rise to the collage of images Miller routered and painted onto the twin panels he assembled from 14 of the planks Cvenkel donated to the project. The overall size is 36 feet long, seven feet tall and three inches thick. Cvenkel agreed with Miller in advance that if his idea was not chosen as the winner of the Canada Winter Games airport art project, then Miller's work would be installed at his sawmill entrance instead.
An array of icons are carved into the wood. The central images are pyramids that symbolize the mountains all around Prince George and mimic the triangular logo patterns used by the Canada Winter Games (also adopted into the permanent branding of Downtown Prince George). There are several references to rivers, sunshine, snow, and specific cultural emblems like the B.C. flag, several First Nations items, and from the U.K., France, and other places important to either Miller or Cvenkel.
There are also artistic references to planets, mathematics, DNA, and other universal systems.
"I believe in connection, and how we are all interwoven as people and cultures, and Prince George is a place where diversity and difference is celebrated," Miller said. "This is a place where people recognize that diversity will actually make us all stronger together."
He said the two most important carved images "are the bee, a visual pun I made on 'being' which we all share, and the Sri Ramana phrase that reads 'to know the truth of one's self as the sole reality, and to merge and become one with it, is the only true realization.'"
Miller used a laminate trimmer as the small router that did the carving. The paint is spare but bold and in the dominant colours - red and black - of the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation. The bare wood is the most prominent colour of all.
The project was worked on in place at Timberspan, for which Miller was grateful to the staff and Cvenkel for accommodating his artistic comings and goings.
Overtop of the wood Miller painted a polyurethane protective coating to help preserve the panels from UV rays and weather. He and Cvenkel are now discussing the possibility of a canopy to be built above it, including lighting, for further protection and demonstration.
"I know that road is not one of the city's main streets, but there are a lot of people working in that area, driving by, doing their industrial work mostly, and for the staff at Timberspan and all the delivery people driving in and out, I hope it gives them a little smile," Miller said. "Art gives that little spark of life, they deserve that out there as much as the people downtown. That's what art is for."
WOOD IF WE COULD
Some of the city's best murals have been lost to fresh coats of blank paint.
The most notable ones start with the building-sized Steve Feltham graffiti painting on the wall of McBike Shop when it changed hands several years ago. (It is now Dana Mandi restaurant.)
Also, the African aid images on the side of the King's Inn bible store on 6th Avenue are now gone under a coat of new standard blue.
Half a block away on Fifth Avenue was the massive aboriginal painting on the side of what was then PG Lock and Key (now Powerhouse Real Estate). It stood for many years as a downtown public art landmark but was coated over a couple of years ago with a flat green and would have been at least partially obscured in any event by the new BCGEU building currently being constructed right next door.
During 2013 discussions about Canada Winter Games legacy projects, longtime community advocate Don Bassermann posed a suggestion that would halt this problem.
"We already know all about wood in Prince George. Wood is our thing," he said. "If murals were painted on large panels of wood instead of right onto the wall of the building, you could go a long ways to keep the art alive when circumstances at the building change. You could move the mural. But for as long as it was there, you'd have that warm look that wood gives off, as well as the painting or carving or however you've done the art piece. It gives the artist a lot of options that concrete or stucco can't provide."
The downside to wood is ensuring it is protected from the elements with proper weather-resistant coatings, but another upside, said Bassermann, is the artwork could be made off-site and even indoors so the artist's creation process wouldn't be confined to warm seasons and fair weather.
"You would have to work with the city to make sure it complied with bylaws, and maybe you look at creating bylaw provisions that specifically allow for this, if it isn't already allowed, but it sends a message about wood being the city's preferred material or medium, and it gives public art a chance to last and last."
