There’s a tyrannosaurus rex ready to devour a trio of terrified joggers on the Green Necklace trail right in front of an elementary school in North Vancouver, and everyone who walks by it does nothing except stop and laugh.
“People don’t expect to see a dinosaur on the path,” says Mia Weinberg, the woman responsible for placing the king of the dinosaurs right next to a school. Weinberg, in fact, has placed a lot of interesting characters along the Green Necklace as part of a public art display entitled Whatever the Weather. The permanent installation includes more than two dozen scenarios drawn on the path that at first glance resemble typical way-finding path markers, but upon closer inspection reveal characters who are up to much more than simply riding a bike in the proper direction or sharing the path with pedestrians.
Visitors first become aware that something different is happening when they reach the trail in front of Queen Mary and notice a way-finding man who has managed to break out of his circle. He’s walking away, waving goodbye to the circle, and that’s when the fun starts.
“There’s just something so simple and humorous and deeper fraught with meaning in that little two-stencil thing – it’s a man and then a circle,” says Lori Phillips, the City of North Vancouver’s Public Art Officer who helped come up with the artwork plan for the Green Necklace, a partially-completed trail that will eventually form a ring around central Lonsdale. “In the signage world generally the instruction is inside the circle. You know – ‘no smoking,’ this or that, whatever – the rules are laid out in the circle with a line across. I think (Mia’s) idea is start enjoying your life. Maybe head off for a walk in the woods. Whatever it is you’re going to do, the message is to feel free to explore your life. Maybe you’re stuck in a rut – try something new.”
The city made a call for artists to submit an idea for artwork to mark the path and, through a juried process, Weinberg’s whimsical way-finding scenarios won the bid. They can currently be seen on the Jones Avenue, Keith Road, and Victoria Park sections of the trail, and will be expanded up Grand Boulevard and around the rest of the loop once construction is completed.
Scenarios range from the comical sight of a skateboarding dog and trail-running T-Rex to more sentimental stories of families meeting, playing and growing old together. The design of the trail made the installation work because the path is divided into two sides with one-way traffic in each lane.
“That gave me the idea that I could do a narrative, because if people were following the arrows they would actually be walking in one direction on one side of the path and another direction on the other side of the path,” says Weinberg, adding that it was important to make the figures look similar to the markers painted on most any path around the world. “I wanted something that was that language so it comes up as a surprise. That’s the reason it’s in white, so that it fits in with what’s already there. But then you suddenly see that it’s not what you’re expecting. That element is using the same language, but with a little twist – shifting things a little so that you can have a chuckle.”
The drawings also needed to be a little different so that people didn’t take them literally.
“It was important to me that all my scenarios were outside the circles – they’re not confined, they are doing their own thing,” Weinberg says. “Obviously I didn’t want to confuse people. I didn’t want them to feel like, ‘Oh, there’s a dog on a skateboard. You have to have a dog on a skateboard on this side of the path.’”
Weinberg says her favourite scenario is a simple chain that involves a couple getting caught in the rain and re-emerging down the path with umbrellas in hand.
“It’s a short one, it’s just three panels, but to me it’s very much North Vancouver,” she says. “People go out in the rain. If they don’t go out in the rain, they don’t go out. If you live in North Vancouver you have to go out in the rain, otherwise you’d stay in all the time.”
The scenarios provide a laugh, but there’s more to it than that, says Phillips. The drawings include people in wheelchairs, seniors, kids, dogs, men, women – all aspects of a thriving community.
“The idea was that you’d see yourself in there,” Phillips says. “The deeper message really is to get out, interact with your community, feel welcome, talk to your neighbours. And here’s a little thing to spark those conversations.”
Weinberg got a thrill when she and her team started drawing the scenarios on the trail.
“This is the first project I’ve done where I’ve actually been installing it in the public realm while people are walking by,” she says. “There was a man who had a baby in a snuggly and we were telling him about the romance story of the guy who is walking a dog, and the woman who meets him pets the dog, they go for a walk together. I explained the scenario, and he said ‘Oh, that’s my life. I’m just taking my baby to my parents-in-law.’ That was really wonderful for me, because that was exactly what I wanted people to feel – that this represents them, and they can connect to it.”
