The 4600 block in downtown Terrace is home to a new interactive wood art installation that is turning heads.
Joerg Jung of JJ’s Wood Art and Amanda Hugon, Freda Diesing School of Northwest Coast Art graduate and Indigenous artist, collaborated on the fixture, which was installed by a city crew across from the Scotiabank on June 22.
The wood was laminated a few years ago, and the sculpture took months to complete, Jung said. It is designed and installed so members of the public can pose and take photos on either side of the installation.
“I’m really super stoked, proud and happy to that I was actually able to collaborate for once with a local artist to get this piece to look the way it looks,” Jung said.
“I just love going around the corner and seeing boom, a different colour in the road, I love it, it’s just meant to be here.”
Jung said that a variety of traditional and power tools were used to make the piece, which was funded by the Terrace Downtown Improvement Area Society (TDIA).
Hugon performed a brief smudging ceremony on June 23 to bless the fixture. She said that the piece is dedicated to missing and murdered Indigenous people, residential school survivors and their families, the LGBTQ community and anyone that is struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic and opioid crisis.
“It is a piece of street art, so I really want to have that connectivity with everyone that is on the street struggling, which is a big deal,” she said.
“We are in a crisis right now so there is a lot of people who haven’t expected to but are on the street, so I’d also like to dedicate this piece to my mother for she is struggling as well.”
The fixture is Hugon’s first street art installation — she said that the collaboration with Jung was a good match and it was important to her to show that landed immigrants, settlers and Indigenous peoples can work together.
“To have this piece showcase that, to show that we can work together, be together, especially today, to bring the traditional and contemporary and merge that all as a piece for everyone to enjoy,” she said. “To be able to do that is such an honour.”
Hugon expressed thanks to Dave Gordon, TDIA president, the City of Terrace’s James Seib who installed the concrete, and Jack Cherniawsky who helped co-ordinate the installation.