What the #@*& is that? Part 2

It’s been a while since I have posted anything on the wonderful and often weird architecture that dots the Winnipeg landscape.  In this offering let us explore some of Winnipeg’s parks and the downtown area for some truly bizarre offerings.

First on our neck snapping trip through town lets take a peek in Assiniboine Park just south of Portage Avenue. This metal monstrosity entitled Agassiz Ice sits like a shiny metal turd polluting the once clean vista of inviting grass and sunny blue sky. I’ll let sculptor Gordon Reeve tell you what he thinks of it.

Agassiz Ice in Assiniboine Park.

The sculpture “opens” just as a film does with an establishing shot of the park with the sculpture in the distance framed by the sky, trees and a river. As the viewer approaches along a predetermined route it appears to grow in size and what appeared to be a single sculpture becomes two and then three separate forms with a passage through. The hard irregular edges isolate a rapid succession of “cinematic frames” which are experienced in varying increments of time. The initial approach takes from twelve to thirty seconds before a significant change in point of view. Another ten to twelve seconds and as the piece is revealed the viewer is able to see and feel the cool polished metal.” Gordon Reeve

Metal masterpiece or shiny steel turds?

Poppycock, there is no predetermined pathway to this gauche monstrosity and it takes a good hour to get stink of artistic failure off of you in the shower before you feel clean again.  What a waste of metal and money.

What the #@*& is that??

Have you ever been driving around your home town and had your head snap back while looking at something out the window?   Perhaps something that you had driven by a hundred times over the course of a lifetime.  Something that made you exclaim “Hey what the #@*& is that?”.

Well dear readers todays entry is all about those little wonders that really make us, well for a lack of a better term, wonder.  Winnipeg is my home town, it is also the capital of the Province of Manitoba. As such it’s littered with such little gems.  I have taken the liberty of going out and selecting a few for your guessing enjoyment.