Making art. Moving minds

The art I create at my collage table is largely personal and of the moment. I have been marking my journey into retirement from full-time work for more than three years and, over that time, I have amassed a goodly number of pieces — some purely visual, others a combination of words and images. Some I have shared with others, some I have posted here on this blog, but many others are simply on my shelf. And that’s fine for me and for my art. 

However, there is a place in this world for very public displays of art — art so profound and creative it must live outside. Indeed, it is intentionally designed to take up public space and to say to the everyday person who encounters it, ‘Stop. Look. Think. Feel the experience of this display, of what this represents.’ 

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Winnipeg-based performance artists, are involved in this very kind of public art project, designed to pay tribute to the LGBTQ2+ community and, specifically, to the survivors and the victims of The Purge: “Between the 1950s and mid-1990s, LGBT members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP and the federal public service were systematically discriminated against, harassed and often fired as a matter of policy and sanctioned practice. In what came to be known as the “LGBT Purge”, people were followed, interrogated, abused and traumatized.” [Source: https://lgbtpurgefund.com/about/#the-settlement]  

I did not know about this bleak period in Canada’s history, but, thanks to this public art project, I now do. That is the value of art, of course: It opens our eyes and our minds to things new and necessary for us to know. 

Shawna and Lorri are part of Team Wreford, one of five short-listed design teams in the running to have their concept brought to life in Ottawa as a public monument that should see the light of day in 2025. But before that happens, the Public Monument selection committee must choose the winning design. I really want that to be Team Wreford’s. 

“Our team is all Canadian, all Winnipeg. We are like the David in among Goliaths of the architecture world. We have been personally impacted by the Purge and we are rooted in the queer community,” explained Shawna in a recent conversation. These facts make the team the underdog in the competition, but that is immaterial relative to the design they are proposing: It should win for its creativity, its heart and its organic representation of the power and the pulse of the LGBTQ2+ community. 

“Our vision is for a space that the community can use, a monument that is significant, and that has presence. Through the monument, our community will be seen. We will be recognized. We will be present in a public space,” said Lorri. They envisage the space being used by anyone, any day — by everyone, every day. “We want it to be welcoming, to have visitors be embraced by the design, to pique their curiosity, and for them to inhabit it, to explore it fully. Nowhere else in Ottawa will feel like this space.” 

Emotions evoked will likely cover the spectrum from sadness to joy. “There is a luminous quality to our design,” said Lorri — that’s the mirror ball on the inside of the representational thundercloud.

See their design here — and please cast your vote. The survey (on that same page) is open only until Sunday November 28th. Thereafter, the five designs can still be viewed online, but the voting will be closed. The selection committee will announce its decision in early 2022.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Images taken from the Wreford Team site