jeff tessier photography

Public Art

Over the past year I've been working on a job for the city's Culture Division photographing all of the city-owned public art - each of the sculptures, memorials, cenotaphs, etc. that comprise the official public face of the arts in Hamilton.  I just finished up the job shooting the two pieces on city hall grounds - 'Migration' and 'Day of Mourning', only lately available after the renovations at the site.

Along the way, though, I learned through my eyes about the range of public art in this city.  The Culture Division - through Ken Coit, the director of "Art in Public Places" -  is interested in increasing the amount of city-commissioned public art in Hamilton, and is exploring how the city might modify its usual procedures for such commissions to make the movement from idea to reality simpler and faster than it has been with the high-profile pieces that the city has traditionally considered "public art".  The first fruit of this effort is the mural in the MacNab Street pedestrian underpass, a wonderful piece done by the Y.E.A.H. team under the leadership of Becky Katz.

And then there are the vigilante pieces put up by people who remain anonymous.  Two artists have been incredibly prolific in Hamilton in the past couple months, placing their work mostly on abandoned, sometimes derelict buildings in the city.  Of course, this gives them a canvas that basically stretches across the entire downtown.