Regina Gateway Project Description

Regina Gateway Artist Statement

Imagine a new unique and iconic public art work for Regina: a civic gateway that is specific to its

landscape and culture. It enhances the environment and marks the experience of entry into the city. The gateway will resonate with the prairie landscape and enrich the sense of identity and arrival.

Inspired by the overarching Saskatchewan sky, its sunlight and horizon, and the powerful city myth of Wascana – ‘a pile of bones’ – the proposed sculpture distils these sources of inspiration into a landscape-based sculpture which captures the ever changing quality of the sky, charts the path of the sun, and reveals the skeletal spine of the plains bison.

Regina Gateway is a sequence of 17 elegantly sculpted monolithic forms. Arranged in a sweeping array, they delineate the path of the sun at its summer solstice. Each unit points to the location of the sun at successive hours from dawn to noon to dusk. They are aligned precisely north-south along Lewvan Drive, spanning Regina Avenue, to create a clear gateway threshold to the City. Inspired by timeless and universal themes--sun and sky, cycles of days and seasons--the monument links native spirituality with daily modern life, the solar system with the prairie soil. Structured specifically to capture the sun’s angles at Regina’s unique latitude and longitude, it nonetheless is universal in scope. The overall rotating, curving composition of the piece is reminiscent of the skeletal spine defining the distinctive back, in profile, of the plains bison, reflecting the iconography of local fauna and history.

Sculpturally, the work connects the sky with the landscape. From a distance, it is a rhythmic

counterpoint to the ground and horizon. Because each of the 17 forms is at a unique angle, they all catch light with different intensities of brightness and shade. They also create dynamic patterns of shadows on the ground which extend longer and longer across the snow in winter as they accept the low rays of the sun, then retract in the spring till, at the moment of the summer solstice, they cast no shadows at all.

One face of each form is a rectangular mirror which enhances the totality’s interplay with light

and sky. In particular, one actually sees framed views of different parts of the sky side by side. The sky is Regina’s most notable natural feature-- large, dynamic, and powerful. It shifts in colour and tone across its vast expanse. Regina Gateway accents this beautiful shifting of colour and tone by juxtaposing framed “samples” from different parts of the sky. For the viewer, the experience of the work is dynamic: it looks different from different angles. It actually seems to move and rotationally shift as one approaches and passes by or through it. At night, illumination transforms the work into a glowing and ethereal form*. While it can be appreciated from a moving car, or stationary from different locations of cars stopped at the intersection, it also invites pedestrian exploration. Walking around it provides an equally fascinating experience with a completely different sense of space and scale, time and speed. A permanent plaque beside it would allow people to read about the work and its significance. The Regina Gateway would offer an outstanding destination for both residents and visitors.

Paul Raff Architect/Artist

Jyhling Lee, Artist/Architect