From a distance, Sackville\u2019s newest piece of public art looks fairly straightforward in design, but to really appreciate Indu Varma\u2019s \u2018Sackville: A Visual Snapshot\u2019, one really needs to get up close and personal.<\/p>\n
CHMA decided to do just that and met the artist outside town hall, where her new ceramic sculptural work is installed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted the images of our past in Sackville to be in front of us,\u201d says Varma. \u201cHistory 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s an image of the old Stedman\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people that you see are not people that were significant in terms of they weren\u2019t politicians, or they weren\u2019t people who were significant in the role that they played. These are people who sort of depict the lifestyle of those who lived here,\u201d says Varma. Telephone operators, box factory workers, a women\u2019s hockey team, and original Mi\u2019kmaq residents are featured.<\/p>\n
In between the large tiles, Varma has also created smaller tiles showing, \u201cthe land, the plants, the birds, the animals that existed here and that have supported generations of people for centuries,\u201d says Varma.<\/p>\n
The whole mosaic is put together in the shape of a ship, an homage to Sackville\u2019s shipbuilding past.<\/p>\n
The project was paid for by the Canada Council, through an artists\u2019 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. \u201cThen it was like, oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into?\u201d 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 \u201clots of challenges,\u201d says Varma, \u201cbut we got through them. And here we are, it\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at this, hopefully there would be one image or the other that you would be able to connect with,\u201d says Varma. \u201cSo that was the intention behind creating this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Varma says she and the town are planning an official launch for the new piece, and details about that will be forthcoming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From a distance, Sackville\u2019s newest piece of public art looks fairly straightforward in design, but to really appreciate Indu Varma\u2019s \u2018Sackville: A Visual Snapshot\u2019, 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. \u201cI…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":136198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[219],"tags":[11596,8818,3619,4917],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136203,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136195\/revisions\/136203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136195"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=136195"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=136195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}