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A Métis artist is focusing on unity and connectivity in her giant, interactive art work at St. Albert’s International Children’s Festival of the Arts.
Tiffany Shaw-Collinge is inviting people to look at the diversity and strength of a community through her UNITY and Children’s Poles project, a larger-than-life temporary public art installation.
Until June 4, festival-goers will celebrate their uniqueness and strengthen their ties to one another by participating in the interactive project as part of the St. Albert Art in Public Places program.
UNITY consists of 32, 10-foot high poles arranged in a circle 45-feet in diameter. Each pole represents a part of the community and labelled with a unique identifier such as “I am Métis,”
“I am a volunteer,” or “I am new to Canada.” Participants are invited to tie colourful yarn to join poles that reflect their identities thereby creating a web of interconnectedness.
“The project communicates notions of diversity within a network,” said Shaw-Collinge. “The complex weaving created by each participant transports individual connections through the strings’ capability to connect multiple identifiers, creating a collective resonant voice.”
An Edmonton-based interdisciplinary artist and intern architect, Shaw-Collinge anticipates about 850 skeins, or 622,000 feet, of yarn will be used on the project which is located behind St. Albert Place.