Hydrant fountains in action

The fountains were installed on the river front in Calgary for Canada Day last week-end, and people were trying them even before we finished installing them! And this week end the Stampede and Water Services have been working together to get them installed this morning on Stampede grounds, more pictures soon.

In the mean time here are a few pictures from last week end:

Fire Hydrant Fountains

The fabrication shop have been working hard and have been fantastic at making this project happen, they finished the three different fountains and they're almost ready to be put in place for Canada Day this week end. Here's a sneak preview of the two other designs and the first one - "strangers" or the "dating fountain" - being used this morning for a TV interview.

More pictures of them in use next week.

W+ residency call

We just released a call for the artist residency with Watershed+: www.watershedplus.ca/residency/res-call01.pdf Feel free to share it widely! Looking forward to reading through the applications.

Hydrant drinking fountain

First trial of the "strangers" fountain today in front of the water center. The fabrication team did a grand job and it's looking very nice.
The fabrication for the 2 other fountains is now starting, looking forward to see the developments.

watershed+ developments

Finally some updates.
The organisation and the setting up of the first Watershed+ initiatives is keeping us busy. From the initial 10 "deliverables", we now have about 25, which is very exciting but takes time.


The bowls for the fountains have arrived today.

The first of these initiatives to become live is the temporary fountains. We've been working with the UEP Public Art Program and the City's metal fabrication team to develop some fountains that can be fixed onto fire hydrants for festivals and other events. Temporary fountains attached to fire hydrant are a fairly common practice in North America, but often limited to a very functional set up and/or as a bilboard for messaging. For Watershed+ the fountains design became an opportunity to play with their social role as gathering spaces and expressing the invisble systems underground. We've designed 3 different fountains which should be ready for Canada day, 1st July. More soon and we'll post pictures as they get built.

We're also having a blog/documentation/source site being developed for W+ which should be ready before the end of the month. In the mean time you can have a look at our daily picture on watershedplus.tumblr.

Watershed+ Mentees

It is now the second week of the artists mentees working with us on the Watershed+ programme. We initially had the intention of having one mentee, but in light of the W+ opportunities it made sense to extend it to 4!
Like most of the initiatives so far, the scope is expanding but that's one of the great thing about this project, the general enthusiasm for the whole program and its potential.

We're currently working on building a virtual place where the content of W+ can be accessed, more new soon!

In the mean time, you can enjoy our visual musing on the Watershed+ tumblr site.

updates

A few updates of the last month or two.

The baroque garden viewed for the clock tower
We are currently in Copenhagen to complete our DIVA residency with Gl Holtegaard as part of the Show time exhibition.
Gl Holtegaard is a contemporary and modern art gallery set in a 1750's house built by the Queen's architect (for himself), with a restored full baroque garden, including its own orchard and beehives.
The combination of the exhibition, the settings and the gallery team makes for a very interesting context to work with. By the end of the residency (24th of this month) we will implement a new project that will respond to these different aspects of the place.

Design session in O2 offices
In the mean time Watershed+ has been picking up speed and momentum and is coming along nicely. As yet there still isn't a website to share more of the developments but it's coming soon! Just before we left we selected 4 mentees to work on different facets of Watershed+ and we're looking forward to work with them on our return to Calgary.
One of the project that is being developed is a design for a new park incorporating a storm water pond system, working with O2 Landscape Architects.

The site has started to be shaped in preparation for the project
On other projects, the art landscape project we are developing for Worcester University is now going through planning, thanks to the hard work of BCA landscape architects with whom we've been refining the initial design.

And last month we took down Iconic Site from the Fort Hotel in Margate