Noel Harding’s Elevated Wetlands: Approaching Accessibility in Public Art

Toronto is brimming with public art. From financial core to suburban sprawl the cityscape is a veritable outdoor gallery of architectural embellishments and sculptural add-ons. The term “public art” originated in the 1960s, with the introduction of works commissioned specifically for the public domain. Critical writing during the 1980s established public art as a legitimate art practice. Downtown corporate commissions offer city dwellers a close proximity to art, which the gallery setting does not afford. Office clerks can picnic amongst Joe Fafard’s herd of bronze cattle, a permanent exterior installation entitled The Pasture (1981), outside of the Toronto Dominion Centre or pause for meditation beneath Wendell Castle’s postmodern clock, Full Moon (1996) at the corner of Yonge and Bloor.

The earliest examples of public art in Toronto were coupled with controversy. The installation of Henry Moore’s sculpture Three Way Piece No. 2, commonly referred to as The Archer, at Nathan Phillips Square created a public outcry in 1966 and was initially not accepted by City Council . It would appear that the bustle of the business world allows so little time for art appreciation that more recent works, however, go largely unnoticed. In Towards a Public Narrative, Gary Michael Dault writes:

The fact is that too often the public – for whom works of
public art have presumably been erected – are either utterly
indifferent to them or hate them with a passion, feeling often
with good reason, that, inevitably unconsulted, they have
simply been lumbered with these huge, hulking aesthetic
faits accomplis which they feel uneasily, are supposed to be
vaguely good for them.

Noel Harding’s Elevated Wetlands, officially inaugurated October 1, 1998, and deemed a so-termed “fait accompli” in Canadian Plastics: November 1998 , approaches a break from the critical indifference or controversial response that earlier public artworks have attracted. The six large-scale animal-like polystyrene planters situated in the Don Valley’s Taylor Creek Park contain plant-life native to the area sustained in a soil comprised of recycled plastics (plastic bottles, waste “auto fluff”, and shredded plastic). The recycled plastic creates a hydroponic growing medium for the plant-life, which has attracted indigenous wildlife such as ducks, herons and frogs. Polluted water from the Don River is pumped via Solar Voltaic systems into created ponds and cycled through the planters. The process cleans the water, which is eventually returned to the river. The sculpture was commissioned by the Canadian Plastics Industry Association as part of the Plastics + Art initiative, and research for the project was conducted at the University of Lethbridge in cooperation with the University of Calgary and the National Research Council.

Visible from the Don Valley Parkway, Noel Harding writes, “The Elevated Wetlands was designed to intrude and locate itself as being evident from the speed of a major traffic artery into downtown Toronto (2 million/month).” While the sculptural forms may be evident to the continuous stream of ongoing commuters, the significance of the work cannot possibly be appreciated at velocities of over 100 km/hour. Visually, the work compliments the concrete urban landscape and arguably blends in rather too well to create the “intrusion” that Harding intends. Overhead highway pixel-boards intermittently describing the function of the work along with updates on the traffic flow situation would perhaps be beneficial. The success of Elevated Wetlands owes significantly to the didactic signage accessible by foot in the Don Valley nature trails.

Harding’s work differs from earlier public works in that it is a functional piece. While the planters are abstract in shape, the work is considerably more accessible to the public because it serves an ecological purpose. Historically, abstraction often leads to public controversy, which stems from a lack of understanding, as evidenced in the 1966 outcry over The Archer. The fluid curving form of Moore’s sculpture, which mimics the architecture of New City Hall, was very new at the time. The public had not yet acquired an understanding of the nonlinear architectural vocabulary. Signage in the case of The Archer would not have succeeded because the work required artistic rather than functional explanation. Harding speaks to the public on a universal level, incorporating the aesthetic with environmental concerns. While the artist’s intent may be lost on the “public” he attempts to address – commuters on the DVP – those traveling by foot or bicycle can easily approach and fully comprehend the work.

An article in Waterloo’s Alternatives Journal, entitled “Working Art: Regenerating Urban Ecosystems With Public Art” details Harding’s Elevated Wetlands, Buster Simpson’s Exchanger Fountain in Anaheim CA, Laura Jordan’s Waterworks Garden in Renton WA and Viet Ngo’s Lemna Project in Devil’s Lake ND:

There are few better symbols of the city dweller’s
isolation from the cycles of nature than the treatment
we afford water in urban areas. Water as precipitation
is treated as a menace and ushered away into
underground drains, water as sewage is blasted with
chemicals and unceremoniously dumped, and moving
water in the form of creeks or streams is often sealed
below the surface in concrete tombs. The public works
that treat, channelize, and drain water are discretely
hidden away, just part of the drab infrastructure that
make cities work, but considered best kept out of mind.

Harding’s work elevates the concern of water treatment to well above ground level so that it may be met with the critical eye of the public.

In C Magazine, Dyan Marie writes:

It is commonplace that the modern era has been one of
specialization and that fine and applied arts follow
separate paths in our culture despite previously long and
intertwining histories. (…) That art has the power to
change the way we think is a belief that runs through most
artists’ veins, if not an absolute article of faith. At minimum,
the original research involved in making art acts free-floating
information set into the public domain. Art ideas have a
history of finding further life by being incorporated into the
general culture at various levels. It is this open-ended
quality of exploration that I recently encountered in the
works of Mark Gomes, Karl Blossfeldt and Noel Harding.

Floating above the freeway, Harding’s Elevated Wetlands sets ecological research into the public domain, marking the point at which the paths of fine and applied arts meet.

If for a moment the busy 9-5 worker parks the car for a weekend excursion by TTC to Victoria Park station, stops perhaps for a picnic lunch at the entrance to Taylor Creek Park and then continues along the Don Valley nature trail to the site of Harding’s Elevated Wetlands, after a trek up a slippery spring slope grasping at barren branches to pull oneself up through the mud, the city dweller comes eye to eye with what Dault terms “a new realization of the imaginative possibilities of technology.” Three of the six elephant-like planters perch atop the hill, a trickle of water dripping from each trunk. In March the dormant plant-life hints at Harding’s triumph. The key to his success, however, lies beneath the overpass in the adjacent descriptive signage detailing the work’s environmental function as a water filtration processor.

Works Cited

“Accessing City Hall: Toronto City Hall Tour – The Archer by Henry Moore”. Online. Toronto.ca. City of Toronto 1998-2006.

Anonymous. “It’s Official – Elevated Wetlands is a Fait Accompli.” Canadian Plastics: November 1998; 56, 11; ABI/INFORM Global, pg. 7.

Anonymous. “Working Art: Regenerating Urban Ecosystems With Public Art.” Alternatives Journal. Waterloo: Spring 1999. Vol. 25, Issue 2, pg. 28.

Bond, Cathleen. “Public Art in Canada.” Canadian Arts and Culture. Online. Compuserve. 18 March 2006.

Dault, Gary Michael. “Towards a Public Narrative.” The Canadian Architect: April 1988; 43, 4; CBCA Business, pg. 20.

Harding, Noel. Curriculum Vitae. Online. Noelharding.ca. 2004/2005.

Harding, Noel. Proposal for The Toronto Transit Commission: Art and Sustainability Forum. Toronto: Noel Harding Studio, March 19, 2001.

Marie, Dyan. C Magazine. Toronto: Sep-Nov 1997, Issue 55, pg. 16.

Rhodes, Richard. Canadian Art. Winter 1995. Vol. 12, Issue 4, pg. 58.

Links

http://www.elevatedwetlands.com/index2.htm
http://noelharding.ca/

*FAH386S Contemporary Canadian Art
Hannah Richardson
Research Project 31/03/06