Artist Ryan Stec proposed “Mesh” for Somerset’s public art installation.
Look up at the street lamps while walking down Somerset Street West this time next year and you may see one of the following public art pieces: coloured lamps mimicking the flashes of a firefly, ropes bunched together like noodles strung over the road or neon-electric strings suspended in a hanging cube like a cat's cradle.
Not interesting enough? Then how about light sabre-style lights that change colour at the push of a sidewalk-level button, or flame-worked sculptures shaped like seed pods, flowers and a dragon's whiskers?
These five big-idea proposals from local artists were shrunk down to miniature models on display tables at the Hintonburg Community Centre Wednesday night, part of the City of Ottawa's competition process for artwork for the Somerset Street West reconstruction project.
Around 50 members of the public milled about a community centre room, heard artists' pitches and jotted down thoughts and comments on feedback forms that will help the city's Art Selection Committee pick a winner for the $90,000 art project.
The winning art will be mounted on 10 to 12 street light poles on Somerset Street West, spanning Chinatown, Little Italy and Hintonburg next fall.
Artist Laura Taler's "Noodle" project would string up entwined strands of Japanese-made Dyneema fibre rope between street poles on either side of the roadway. She envisions the ropes stretching 25 to 35 metres across Somerset Street, almost like a musical scale.
Several more poles will have a bundle of the ropes spun around them like a bird's nest.
Taler said the power lines and telephone wires that hover above city streets inspired the proposal. So did a certain culture-spanning carbohydrate.
"I thought, 'What connects Chinatown, Little Italy and Hintonburg?' " Taler said.
"Noodles. Everybody loves noodles."
Ryan Stec's proposal, "Mesh," would thread electroluminescent wire – picture glowing neon shoestrings – through 10 connecting points inside the frame of an empty cube.
The strings would be laced into unique designs, like a children's string game.
Stec said new designs for the "hanging line drawing" could be commissioned or created by children’s summer camps.
"All lights have to be changed," he said.
"Our idea is that when they're changed they can be rethought, re-imagined."
A report with the public's feedback will be presented to the city's art selection squad before it picks a winner next week.