From a distance, Sackville’s newest piece of public art looks fairly straightforward in design, but to really appreciate Indu Varma’s ‘Sackville: A Visual Snapshot’, one really needs to get up close and personal.
CHMA decided to do just that and met the artist outside town hall, where her new ceramic sculptural work is installed.
“I wanted the images of our past in Sackville to be in front of us,” says Varma. “History for the most part lies in books and archives and museums. But I wanted it to be in front of us so that when people look at these images, they mean something to them, they can connect with it. And they can start conversations which will connect generations.”
Sackville: A Visual Snapshot is a mosaic made up of dozens of individually created tiles depicting various images from the cultural and natural history of the Sackville area. Varma used image transfer, painting and glaze work to create the tiles. There’s an image of the old Stedman’s storefront from Main Street, maps showing where a ferry used to cross the Tantramar Rivera, as well as images of railway bridges and covered bridges on the marsh. People figure prominently in the mix.
“The people that you see are not people that were significant in terms of they weren’t politicians, or they weren’t people who were significant in the role that they played. These are people who sort of depict the lifestyle of those who lived here,” says Varma. Telephone operators, box factory workers, a women’s hockey team, and original Mi’kmaq residents are featured.
In between the large tiles, Varma has also created smaller tiles showing, “the land, the plants, the birds, the animals that existed here and that have supported generations of people for centuries,” says Varma.
The whole mosaic is put together in the shape of a ship, an homage to Sackville’s shipbuilding past.
The project was paid for by the Canada Council, through an artists’ grant that Varma aquired on her own. Last year she pitched the idea to the town of Sackville, asking them to provide a home for the piece. The answer was an enthusiastic yes. “Then it was like, oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into?” recalls Varma. Never having done a project of this scale, there were plenty of jitters, says the artist. A change of location from inside town hall to an exterior wall also meant adjustments to the technical plan. There were “lots of challenges,” says Varma, “but we got through them. And here we are, it’s done.”
“When you look at this, hopefully there would be one image or the other that you would be able to connect with,” says Varma. “So that was the intention behind creating this.”
Varma says she and the town are planning an official launch for the new piece, and details about that will be forthcoming.