Add a ladle every night
To every ladle, add a light

101 Nights is an art installation by Vancouver writer and broadcaster Bill Richardson, and it ended tonight on the winter solstice. Bill produced it inside the shopfront windows of his old Edwardian house in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood. I’ve walked past this every night for months now. Bill collected 101 steel ladles from thrift and other sources, and each night for 101 nights he hung a ladle from the ceiling and lit a candle in its bowl. Tonight, on the solstice, the ladles total 101 and the whole neighbourhood was invited in to light a candle and make a wish.

101 Nights was so beautiful that I predict the neighbourhood will want to see it again next year, but lighting all the candles nightly was such a phenomenal amount of work that no one will blame Bill if he never does it again. I suggested that he hire a proper lamplighter, with a dark hood and a long taper and candle snuff, to come and light the candles every night. Maybe the figure of the lamplighter comes to mind because there’s an almost Dickensian feeling about the evenings at this time of year, here at the 49th parallel when it’s dusk at 4:30 pm. But it’s also that there’s not a little of the Dickensian in our neighbourhood, so close to ground zero of poverty in Vancouver, and the ladles are somehow a strange reminder of the ever-present soup kitchens nearby.

Photo essay of post-war Yugoslavian monuments and architecture by Belgian artist Jan Kempenaers, from the Crown Gallery site. “Spomenik” means monument, and all of these structures were meant to commemorate WWII losses and point to progress and a generally utopian future. Thanks to the turmoil of subsequent wars in the former Yugoslavia, these brutalist monuments have fallen into disrepair. More information on Kempenaers here.

I’ve liked this building from childhood, but somehow I managed to see it with fresh eyes recently – I was late for an art event there, it was dusk, I was tired, the entry was deserted and somehow I suddenly noticed how ridiculously beautiful it is. It houses the Museum of Vancouver and the H.R. MacMillan Planetarium, famous in part for the Led Zep and Pink Floyd laser light shows which everyone steadfastly refuses to attend with me. I’ve been trying to get someone to go with me for years. The building’s shape probably references both flying saucers and the finely woven hats of the Salish First Nations on whose traditional lands Vancouver squats. The architect is George Hamilton and the building was completed in 1968; the stainless steel crab fountain (turned off for maintenance when I took these photos) is by sculptor George Norris. Click photos for more information.

and these shots by ChimayBleue on Flickr:

Toronto is lucky to have this great Sol Lewitt piece at its airport.  Via The Canadian Design Resource.