The cost of repairing a piece of public art that was quietly removed from Sparks Street may be almost double what the city paid for it in the first place.
The Kinetic Clock — a modern art sundial that was commissioned from artist Andrew Stonyer in 1989 for nearly $37,000 — was removed from its location on the pedestrian mall last year because trucks and snowplows kept hitting it, said Sam Elsaadi, the chair of the Sparks Street Business Improvement Area.
The clock was taken away sometime in April 2013 by a contractor hired by the BIA after it was hit by a truck and subsequently deemed unsafe for its location between O’Connor and Metcalfe streets, Elsaadi told the Citizen.
The city and BIA are at odds over whether the city was informed about the Kinetic Clock’s removal and apparent storage in a field near Richmond, where it was photographed in August 2013.
Elsaadi says the city was contacted when the piece was removed, while the city claims its art and heritage department wasn’t notified about the clock’s absence until June 12, 2013.
The piece is now in the city’s possession, waiting to be repaired.
“It’s not been thrown away, it’s safe,” Elsaadi said.
But those repairs won’t come cheap. They’ll cost between $45,000 and $70,000, according to an estimate supplied by the city. Its art and heritage department is now consulting with Stonyer, who lives in England, on the repairs and relocation on Sparks Street or elsewhere.
Although the clock is owned by the city, Elsaadi said the BIA has spent an unspecified amount of money over the years to maintain it and repair the cement around it.
He says the city and the BIA are working together to make the necessary repairs and decide where to install it next.
Sparks Street would be an option, Elsaadi says, as long as “we put it in a safe place that’s far from the trucks, from the fire exit.”
“If the city wants to put it back on Sparks Street, it’s their street and we’ll be happy to find a right location for it,” he said.
Although the street has been closed to vehicular traffic for decades, delivery trucks, snowplows and utility vehicles can often been seen driving or parked on Sparks.
The incident is just the latest bout in the delivery trucks versus public art boxing match on Sparks Street.
As reported by the Citizen in May 1993, the statue of a grizzly bear holding a fish on the tips of its claws, called Territorial Prerogative, was “installed last summer after a delivery truck drove over the previous artwork at the sight, the so-called kinetic clock, a kind of modern-art sundial that is now being repaired.”
Coincidentally, the bear statue also required a repair, the paper reported at the time, after another delivery truck cracked the bear’s arm.
But that wasn’t the end of the bear’s troubles.
It made front-page news last December after the artist’s widow complained when the BIA adorned the bear with a big red bow and string of lights, in a failed attempt to infuse the public art with some festive cheer.
Les Gagné, who at the time was the mall authority’s executive director, said the decorations were merely part of an effort to make Sparks Street more festive and welcoming.
“It’s silly. What can I say?” he said at the time. “It’s Christmas, and if putting some lighting and a bow on a bear gets people upset, well maybe that’s just our city.”
