The District of Sechelt has put out a call for an artist to create “eye-catching and colourful enhancements” to crosswalks at two downtown intersections.
In a Request for Expressions of Interest (REIO) posted Jan. 17, the district said it is looking for unique, stencil-type designs to be applied in a thermoplastic material on the pedestrian crosswalks at the intersections of Trail Avenue and Cowrie Street and Trail and Dolphin Street. The project will be a finishing touch to a $6-million upgrade of Trail Avenue, now underway.
The winning artist, who would be paid a total of $2,500 for the task, will be chosen in a two-stage process, Sechelt’s arts, culture and communications coordinator Siobhan Smith said in an interview. “The first part is simply gathering a list of names of who’s interested and what their backgrounds and abilities are to do a project like this,” Smith said. “The second stage will allow us to narrow that list down” to the successful applicant.
Although she could not commit to any numbers for Stage 1, Smith speculated that perhaps three “strong candidates” would emerge. Each would be paid $500 on submission of acceptable designs for the crosswalks. “It’s going to require that they do a site visit, that they come in and talk to our engineers and the contractors who will be installing it, and that they really find out about the [thermoplastic] material.”
The artist making the best submission – to be chosen by a small committee made up of district staff and the public – will receive a further $2,000 for their design services on completion of the project.
“This can be quite a challenge for artists because there are such limitations with the material itself and most artists will never have worked with it before,” Smith said. “Also, whatever they create will need to be in a digital form and will have to be simplified, if it isn’t already, in such a way that the installer can actually make a stencil template out of. It is a bit of a challenge.”
There are eight crosswalks involved in the project, four at each intersection, but that would not necessarily require eight unique designs, Smith said, as some might “mirror each other” in different parts of the intersection.
As to theme, “typically with projects like this we ask that [the designs] reflect the nature culture and/or history and heritage of Sechelt. That’s very broad. We’re pretty open to ideas,” Smith said. “It needs to make sense in the public realm, it needs to make sense for all sorts of people who are going to be using it, for downtown, and that somehow speaks to the community.”
The deadline for applications to be considered for Stage 1 of the process is 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 10. The project installation is currently expected to be completed by the end of July.
The detailed REIO can be downloaded from a link under the “What’s New” column at www.sechelt.ca
