Re: “Is the current location of the East Van cross on shaky ground?” Jan. 22, and “120-foot ladder gives rise to public art debate in Vancouver,” Jan. 15.
The state of public art in Vancouver is strange and, at times, ill: gaudy fake trees, real trees with cars on top, the ladder to nowhere, giant birds and, most of all, the East Van cross.
The high-art elites of our city feed expensive bones to their pals in the form of city funds. Renegade developers profiteer, in the form of write-offs, by erecting tasteless pieces of garbage.
Why can’t we try and get these funds to our city’s mass of underground artists and creatives, in the form of creative space subsidies, or traditional and cultural art spaces?
The cross at Clark and Great Northern Way is disgusting. Not only has the city and artist successfully ripped a piece of cultural identity from a geographic, marginalized and generational community, the image has been handed over to a new group, that which displaced the community whose identity they've stolen. They've warped and ruined the meaning of the East Van image entirely.
Why, in this day and age, would our city think it prudent to erect a symbol of Christianity? It’s a symbol of oppression, war, tyranny and colonialism made to look over some of the poorest parts of our city.
The state of Vancouver public art reflects the perspective of those who sit at the top of the glass towers — fiscally irresponsible, tasteless and completely removed from the realities, not just of our cities artists and creatives, but of our communities as a whole.
Andrew Turner,
Vancouver
