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Local art exhibit serves dual purpose
by Rhonda Sieben
the Carillon
It’s big, it’s shiny, and has been spinning around campus for just about a month now. It’s called the “Rolling Composter.”
The steel globe is five-and-a-half feet in diameter and is the brainchild of Wendy Peart. She is a sessional lecturer at the University of Regina’s Department of Visual Arts.
“The idea came from the simple activity of working with composters in my own back yard,” she says. “I’ve always thought that I would really like to make a large composter that people could roll around like a little pet, take it on a walk, feed it, nurture it . . . it’s a living organism in itself.”
This organism has found a temporary home at the University of Regina. Peart’s piece is on display in the academic green. The Rolling Composter won a local outdoor sculpture contest that attracted world-wide attention.
“The idea for the competition grew out of the desire to have a sculpture park in behind the visual arts department to draw attention to visual arts here at the university,” says Sean Whalley, also a sessional instructor for the department. He had a hand in organizing the competition.
After winning the competition, Peart set out to create her sculpture. The design of the composter is not only functional, but is symbolic of many things in society.
“It does mimic a globe with the longitudal and latitudinal graphic structure on it,” says Peart, “so of course there’s that immediate association with it being a world or planet. And it’s on a chain which is tethered to the ground, so it’s obviously drawing a strong connection to the fact that we can’t escape it. It’s a ball and chain as well, so in a way it conjures up ideas of this being perhaps burdensome . . . that we have to be concerned about these elements, that we can’t just leave all of our garbage in a plastic bag on a curb or in the trash bin.”
Working with metal is not Peart’s artistic forte, so she had to rely on others to create the aesthetic design. She drew up plans for the spherical metal cage, and started shopping around for someone to manufacture it for her.
“I ended up choosing the company I felt most confident in," she adds. “Because it was a public piece, it had to stand up to the weather, it had to be strong. And because it was a piece that people could interact with, it had to be built with safety concerns in mind.”
For Whalley, the ability for people to connect with the piece is what made it stand out from other entries.
“You can roll it and move it, and it’s meant to be interactive,” he says. “It engages the public in more than just a visual manner.”
The mobile aspect of the composter has posed some problems though, making this a learning experience for the artist.
“I have to be aware and just expect that people are going to touch it and move it, that they’re going to go to the extreme and do the most inane things with it,” she says. “If you build it to roll, people are going to roll the heck out of it. If you build a ball, people are going to play with the ball.”
Because the rolling composter is so mobile, it has been moved from its high-profile location on the corner of Wascana Parkway and Kramer Boulevard to the now-enclosed academic green near the education link.
Peart’s sculpture will remain on campus until the lease runs out next October.
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