Photo by Jonathan Cape, CP
When I was a kid a man who’d lived through the Great Depression told me that from time to time rich people liked to throw a party called The Washerwomen’s Ball, a reference to women who made their living taking in laundry. The party was attended by the very well-to-do, all dressed up as poor people. They had a wonderful time, he said.
Some decades later I was taken to a restaurant in Florida called Po’ Folks, part of a national chain owned by Burt Reynolds. Down home food like catfish and grits was served on tin plates, with drinks in canning jars at tables jam-smacked with smiling white patrons. The only visible poor folks were the servers, black and unsmiling.
Both those events came to mind when I decided to check out Spinning Chandelier twirling under the Granville Bridge.
I like public art. It can lighten up a city often called No Fun and can always start a conversation. I liked The Stop because a row of stop signs in Charleson Park was so whimsical. Others couldn’t stand it. I liked Love Your Bean, the giant jelly beans also set in our park, where kids liked to climb all over them next to the sign that said No Climbing. Some people hated either Poodle on the Main Street pole or A-Maze-Ing Laughing in the West End, or the stacked cars on Totem Pole near Science World, or Acoustic Anvil: A Small Weight To Forge The Sea in Leg-In-Boot Square. I appreciated all of them, mostly because they were there – that the City had provided public art for people to enjoy (or argue about) and some artists actually received money for their work.
That was before Spinning Chandelier.
I didn’t know that paying for public art is part of the deal when a developer like Westbank has a project like Vancouver House – the inverted-looking building across the Creek where a buyer who can’t afford $9M for the penthouse may have to settle for a lesser unit for a mere $6.9M. Whatever companies pay for art is small change tossed by millionaire developers who build housing beyond the reach of most people who live and work here. Who does live in these buildings or, indeed, whether anyone does, is not their business. On to the next one.
I foolishly thought that an independent committee, consisting at least partly of artists, decided which art would be chosen for public display. But Westbank not only paid for the art but got to choose it. And to have its choice installed on public land. And to pool its public art obligations from four of its developments into one pricey monument to itself where all the money that could support a number of artists is paid to only one.
Which brings me to Spinning Chandelier as a work of art. Perhaps in another context, one could appreciate the incongruity of a chandelier set under a bridge, a traditional hangout and often home for poor people the world over.
But that’s not the context here. Westbank, whose wealth is made by providing housing to the rich, invites us to admire this in-your-face $4.8M chandelier. There could be no greater symbol of that world and its result, the driving out of the poor and not-yet poor who can’t afford to live here anymore. In so doing this developer is no different from the jovial party-goers done up in rags for the Washerwomen’s Ball, or the well-served restaurant patrons who cheer each other on with the clink of canning jars.
– Sharon Yandle (Marine Mews)