A site-specific sculpture installed on a hill in High Park in the Summer of Love is getting a different specific site, and a new lease on life, thanks to the city's cultural office, art consultant
Karen Mills and her employer, developer
Concord Adex.
The 1967 sculpture, called "
Flower Power," was
Mark di Suvero's first large-scale modernist piece in a career that has since been defined by them.
Over the years, the sculpture, made of steel I beams, deteriorated and was partially dismantled, though kept on display in the park close to a companion piece, di Suvero's "No Shoes." According to
Gabriel Leung, director of development for Concord Adex, he and Mills -- who is
largely responsible for the presence of Douglas Coupland's art in City Place and elsewhere -- at first had trouble negotiating with the artist. "He wasn't very happy with the way his sculpture was delapidating in High Park," Leung says.
But they were eventually able to come to terms, and in 2008, the city and the developer made an arrangement that would see the large sculpture sent back to its creator's Long Island studio for restoration, and then placed alongside
Linear Park in Concord Adex's
City Place development in the old railway lands at a cost of $350,000 to the city. The developer donated the time of its landscape architect and engineer to prepare the new site. Flower Power was installed last week.
An officer with the city's cultural office, who asked that she not be quoted, said the site was a better location for the piece, allowing it to be more closely watched and better cared for.
No Shoes will also be restored and re-placed, though the city is not sure when or where yet.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: City of Toronto Culture
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