Installing a Sculpture

On Monday afternoon, as I was walking home from work, I noticed some activity taking place on a terrace down some steps from the sidewalk, along the route between Major's Hill Park and the Alexandria Bridge in Ottawa.

It was a crew of guys installing a sculpture on the terrace, which overlooks the Ottawa River (you can see a bit of the river and a boat in the background). The sculpture was made of hundreds of pieces of wood that had to all be fitted together, like the skeleton of some exotic extinct animal. The guys were working very hard and it looked like a lot of precision was required.

Tuesday morning, as I passed by, I checked on their progress. They were still very hard a work but it looked much closer to completion.

Meanwhile, a couple of other guys were installing another part of the sculpture up at sidewalk level. I liked the idea that some of the sculpture was up here, and the other part would be visible if you looked over the fence at the terrace below. The view here is great, with the Parliament Buildings in the background - nice place for a sculpture.

Eight hours later, I checked on the installation as I was walking home from work. They still seemed to have a lot of work to do on this part of the sculpture on the terrace. The man in this photo is the actual sculptor (I asked and one of the installation crew pointed him out).

However, the installation of the part of the sculpture up at street level seemed to be mostly complete.

I was fooling around with my camera and really like the juxtaposition of things in this shot - the shadows of the fence meeting the lines made by the pieces of wood in the sculpture, and then the feet up in the corner.

It has been interesting following the progress of the installation of this sculpture. It brings back memories of helping my husband Peter, when he installed his sculptures in public venues many years ago (mostly in the States). As soon as this sculpture is completely installed, I will take some pics of it to post. I think it will be a beautiful work.