Richard Tetrault high above Hastings St. at work on the Orwell Hotel mural.

My post last week about the new mural emerging on the wall of the Orwell Hotel at 456 East Hastings St. was improvised from materials at hand, included some errors, and failed to indicate the broad community roots of this project.

David Eddy, of the Vancouver Native Housing Society, sent me this update today:

The mural was commissioned by Vancouver Native Housing Society (VNHS) at the Orwell Hotel, a renovated SRO which we manage and operate for BC Housing.

The mural is an urban Aboriginal initiative whose major sponsors to date have been BC Housing, and the City of Vancouver’s Great Beginnings program. We have also received significant donations from the Royal Bank, the Strathcona BIA, Britannia Community Services, and General Paint. There was no federal stimulus grant received for the mural. It is all BC money.

We have been very fortunate to have commissioned Richard Tetrault, Vancouver’s pre-eminent muralist, as the project’s artistic coordinator and we engaged members of the DTES community in the design process. The artists involved in the design and application, Jerry Whitehead, Richard Shorty, Haisla Collins, Sharifa Marsden, Don Howell, and Nicola Campbell are all Aboriginal.

The concept is based on VNHS’ plan of developing social enterprise through our social and supportive housing portfolio: to create employment for urban aboriginals and ultimately provide income to VNHS to invest in sustaining and increasing affordable housing.

Another vehicle we will use to achieve this goal is to create a “Fair Trade Art Gallery” in a building we currently have under development at 31 West Pender Street. A project that we entered into with Heritage Canada last year named “Looking Forward/Looking Back” was the entity we used to kick-start this process. Looking Forward/Looking Back was an initiative that looked at life in the DTES through the eyes of Aboriginal artists.

Another purpose of the Orwell mural project, which we call “Through the Eyes of the Raven”, is to highlight, in a very positive way, the downtown eastside community and the people who live and work there, many of whom are tenants of VNHS. The mural, although not completed, has already created a buzz and we see it when completed as a focal point, particularly for urban Aboriginal folks.

We see it heralding the renaissance of aboriginal culture and pride in an area that was the traditional and is the current home of many native people.

At nearly 8,000 square feet we believe it will be the largest piece of public art in Vancouver and one that will be viewed by locals and visitors alike with awe and appreciation.

(Warning: this is a big powerpoint file, so it make take time to load.)

You may not agree with Goertz’s opinion of Vancouver’s art, but this collection is remarkable.

The new mural appearing on the Orwell Hotel, 456 East Hastings.

The Orwell Hotel at 456 East Hastings St. is the latest site for a mural co-ordinated by Strathcona artist Richard Tetrault. (Another is nearby inside Bruce Eriksen Place.)

This mural is part of a federal stimulus grant that “involves system, structural, life safety, internal finishes and sustainability initiatives for 55 social housing units.” (UPDATE, July 15: Funding is also provided by the city’s Great Beginnings program, the Strathcona BIA and RBC.)

Tetrault’s crew group is swinging off the swing stage six days a week and will complete the project in August, weather permitting. The mural is the latest in a long series of Tetrault-inspired projects that are making East Vancouver into an open-air gallery.

Andrew Owen and politician at the new gallery wall between Woodwards' and the Cambie Hotel.

Vancouver artist Andrew Owen, who now has a show at the Marion Scott Gallery in Gastown, has taken over the walls of the old Slam Gallery, a two-story building attached to the side of the Cambie Hotel, for his very unique brand of public art.

Cambie regulars have enjoyed Owen’s work on the building’s Cordova St. frontage for years, but this month the public  gallery has been extended along the building’s long east wall, directly across from the new Woodwards’, where Owen and other artists, many from the Downtown Eastside, are displaying their work.

Much of Owen’s work is taken straight from the street, including the remarkable Brilliant Cut, a very large piece in the Marion Scott show that carves down through the multiple layers of street posters to excavate months of informal public art.

Too much of the city’s public art is stale, Owen believes, a conservative compromise that focuses either on steel, concrete and glass sculptures in safe takes on Modernism — what he calls “plop art” — or the low-rent anti-graffiti free-for-alls used to control tagging and the work of street artists.

But there’s nothing stale about Owen’s public art. It’s accessible, engaging and right off the street. It would look great in the Mayor’s Office — but that’s just me.

The Galleria Italia, the new Dundas St. facade of the Art Gallery of Ontario, designed by Frank Gehry.

A number of Vancouver councillors, in Toronto this week for the annual meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, made a quick pilgrimage to the Art Gallery of Ontario, where a massive expansion project designed by starchitect Frank Gehry was completed in 2008.

Could the AGO project indicate ways to expand the Vancouver Art Gallery on its current site, as some have suggested? It was my first visit to the AGO in many years, and there’s no doubt it’s a spectacular new building, growing organically out of the original gallery in dramatic fashion.

But it seems clear that the key to the AGO expansion was one man: Lord Thomson of Fleet. Gallery after gallery holds the treasures accumulated by the world’s richest pack rat, who never seemed to buy one example of an artist’s work were 12 would do. One room’s walls were covered with empty frames, as if awaiting the proceeds of an uncompleted shopping trip.

The most pleasant find was a retrospective on the impact of Coach House Press on the Toronto art scene. Located in a small print shop in a tiny brick building off Bloor St., CHP provided a focal point for literary and artistic energy that included such luminaries as poet Michael Ondaatje and artist Greg Curnoe. (I briefly studied offset printing there in the 1970s, when photo offset technology was state of the art and the Internet had not been thought of.)

Curnoe, an avid cyclist who died after being hit by a car in 1992, was represented by his recreation of a vintage Zeus 10-speed.

The new studio promises to be a new focus for the East Side Cultural Crawl and next month’s open house will be a unique opportunity to sample the Crawl early.

The report, drafted by former city manager Ken Dobell, set out a work plan to deal with a host of urgent and conflicting city priorities for its cultural infrastructure in the run-up to the 2010 Olympic Games. The basic concept was a new “Cultural Precinct” of a concert hall, a new art gallery and related developments in and around the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, all bundled in a way that would attract provincial and federal funding.

The report endorsed the VAG’s view that it needed to double its size and move to a much larger site.  It proposed that the VAG, a concert hall and federal office towers all be considered for the Larwill Park site. This grand design would be driven forward with hands-on involvement by the province.

In fact, the report contemplated an advisory committee including “the Premier, Minister of Tourism, Sports and the Arts, as well as the Mayor and a City Councillor, be established to meet quarterly, receive progress reports and provide advice on the program.”

There are few clearer examples of how the city became a branch of the Premier’s Office during Sam Sullivan’s term as mayor.

Dobell, who had just retired as deputy to the Premier, was retained by the city with funds pooled by Victoria and the city for the purpose, an arrangement that led to charges of conflict of interest.

He was later convicted of violations of the lobbyist’s act for his role in another two-way contract between the city and province, that one involving social housing and the Streetohome Foundation. (Dobell was so indispensable to the hapless mayor that he accompanied Sullivan and former city manager Judy Rogers to Ottawa to lobby the federal government for support on both these projects.)

Did the committee ever meet? I’ll try to find out. We do know, however, that Premier Campbell made a bombshell announcement in May 2008 that the art gallery would move to the Plaza of Nations site, a declaration that caught the city and VAG flat-footed. (The Premier returned to the neighbourhood yesterday to unveil plans for an entertainment complex, two hotels and a major casino.)

Almost two years were lost while the VAG and the city dutifully examined the Premier’s decision and found it flawed. Finally, the province confirmed that it would leave the Premier’s $50 million funding commitment on the table for the Larwill Park site.

So it was that the VAG confirmed last month that it remains committed to a new gallery at the Larwill Park site, although it has raised its sights and hopes to have the three-acre location to itself, without the distraction of office towers and a concert hall. In effect, the VAG is responding to the direction set by council in 2006 — albeit with a much larger demand for space — before the Premier sent everyone off in another direction.

In the meantime, however, the Sullivan council had approved a $50 million investment in upgrades to civic theatres in time for the Games, counting on revenues from the development of Larwill Park to pay back the expenditure. This is a large number, one the current council cannot simply wave away.

One striking feature of the 2006 report is any mention of the future of the VAG’s current site at Robson Square, a key concern of those critical of the proposal to move to Larwill Park. Robson Square, of course, did get an upgrade in time for the Games and reclaimed its status as the city’s major public space.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the three lost years of Sullivan’s Cultural Precinct boondoggle, it is this: backroom, insider decisions seldom win public confidence. The VAG collection belongs to the people of the city. Until they understand all of the issues at play, it may prove hard to win a consensus on the future of one of our most vital public institutions.

But opinions diverge sharply on everything else: the size of expansion required, the best location for that expansion and the future of the existing site at Robson Square. The plan has even been attacked from beyond the grave in a posthumous editorial by Abraham Rogatnick.

Until council receives a staff report on discussions between the city and VAG for its proposed move to Larwill Park, the old bus depot site next to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, I will be doing some careful listening.

One view that has not been previously released, beyond her own e-mail network, is this open letter from long-time city councillor and former VAG member Darlene Marzari, who provides a unique historical perspective on the possibilities for expansion at the current site:

Dear friends,
I am no longer accustomed to throwing in my two cents on civic issues except around dinner tables and in canoes on distant lakes.  But I am ready to join those who are concerned about the Art Gallery’s decision to move to Larwill Park (a.k.a. the old bus station site).
Frances Bula, Abe Rogatnick (before he died), Bing Thom, Cornelia Oberlander, Lisa Rochon and a few others have already aired their thoughts on the matter and have been eloquent in doing so.
They have clearly outlined the reasons and benefits for keeping the Gallery on its present site: these reasons having to do with the location being the very heart of the city, the place where art should be, and the building being purpose-designed and renovated for the use by Arthur Erickson in the ’80s.
I would add to these reasons that,  if the intent is  to hold an international competition and strive for an architectural statement of Bilbao proportions, then I suspect that excavating under the Georgia Street  public area and  moving into the adjacent quarters in Robson Square (now rented by UBC) might be the  cheaper alternative.
My main point is to inform you all that twelve years ago, a committee designated by the VAG Board brought forward a comprehensive plan for a potential expansion of the gallery. The committee was co-chaired by Michael Heeney, an architect and partner with Bing Thom, and myself.
We contracted with Michael Lundholm, an architectural planner with remarkable credentials and museum planning experience – and a Canadian, I may add – who spent a year studying the capacity and shortcomings of the existing site and reported to the Board with a proposed building program and a number of options for expansion.
The proposed program would have increased the floor space of the gallery and its storage area by 50 percent.  He illustrated that there were a number of different approaches that could be taken on the site to accommodate this additional space. No grand architectural plan was drawn – simply an assessment of need and what might be feasible with a few drawings to demonstrate the possibilities.
These ideas were run by Arthur Erickson who saw the possibilities and did not object to our final presentation.  The Board endorsed the concept.
Pre-2000 was not the time, however, for huge capital fundraising in the city and the City itself had other cultural issues to deal with and was not on side for a protracted exercise which would have raised significant long standing city-provincial questions about whose authority the building and lands came under and who might be left holding the bag if major excavations were considered.
The ideas were left hanging, the committee disbanded and the materials remain in Michael Heeney’s files and probably at the Gallery for anyone to peruse.
I exhume the story now because the material might well be worth looking at again should the Board reconsider its plans.   There is a Plan B in other words, a decade old but worth a reread.
I have huge respect for Michael Audain and I can understand why he might be taking such a strong position on Larwill Park.  It has many claimants and has been studied over five years as a possible home for a variety of cultural uses.  Nothing conclusive has emerged, however, so now is an ideal time for him to stake a claim at Larwill.
It’s as if there is nothing for the VAG to lose by engaging in this strategy.  But to risk losing the Georgia Robson site  in the process and to delay looking at the possible alternative in a timely way could well be a huge loss for the city as a whole.   And if it is true  that heritage considerations are limiting any meaningful expansion possibilities on the present site, then perhaps it is time for some compromises to be made by and with the appropriate agencies.
I’m writing this to a few friends knowing that you might be in the position of influencing decisions on this matter.  In a few cases, you will be making decisions.
I would rather write this letter than go to an op-ed piece because I think the situation calls for some leadership and getting the relevant bodies around a table somewhere to work it out before positions are completely entrenched with somebody winning and somebody losing.
Of course, as always, I am concerned how such major decisions can be made in the first place without a decent public involvement.  The City Planning Commission used to be the place where issues like this would be discussed and communities canvassed for opinions, sometimes formally, and sometimes informally.  Think City would be another agency that could put this on its agenda for a symposium or even a debate.
The School of Planning at UBC has always had an interest in the downtown core and might well have ideas here.   There are ways to canvas opinion by including citizens in the process rather than forcing reactions in the press. But I am capable of digressing onto old familiar themes here.
Thanks for reading this.  Please recognize yourself in the informal list of tasks that might be taken on that are implicit in this piece and make a difference if you can on this issue!
Sincerely,

Darlene

Bright Light installation at the Yue Shan Society in Chinatown: even more beautiful at night.

Fireworks and dragon dancing celebrated the opening of the Bright Light public art installation in the courtyard of the  Yue Shan Society at 39 East Pender today, where just 30 years ago a narrow walkway linked Pender St. to Market Alley.

The installation by a team led by architect Inga Roecker used 800 umbrellas to light up the sky above the courtyard, which is part of 12 installations commissioned by the City of Vancouver’s public art program during the 2010 Games.

The entire project makes for a fascinating walking tour of Chinatown and the Downtown Eastside, all best seen at night.

Dragons dance for the opening of the Yue Shan courtyard.

Harbhajan Mann and the Quantum Bhangra Feb. 27 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre promises a hot Punjabi ending to a Cultural Olympiad that began with the cool Taiwan dance classic Moon Water.

While not the first event of the Cultural Olympiad, Moon Water by Taiwan’s Cloud Garden dance company Feb. 5 was an extraordinary evening, not least because of the quiet pool of water that literally flooded the stage as the hypnotic performance unfolded.

Cultural Olympiad director Robert Kerr said the near sellout crowd at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre made it perhaps the largest-ever single audience for modern dance in the city.

If so, it is a tribute to the Taiwanese company and its community supporters, but also a sign of the transformation the cultural program may be working on Vancouver audiences.

For a few weeks, Vancouver will host a series of world-class events normally available only global cultural capitals.

An example, in complete contrast to the cool yet intense Moon Water, is Quantum Bhangra with Harbhajan Mann, an evening of the world’s top bhangra performers on one stage, that will close out the Games program. It is as big a gift to the city from India as Cloud Gate was from Taiwan. At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Feb. 27, 7 p.m.