A Visit to MOSAICANADA150
I’ve been looking forward to the Mosaiculture exhibit in Gatineau, Quebec since January. After a busy summer, I finally got to see it, just a week before it ends, and boy am I glad I did. MOSAICANADA150 is a tremendous display and a wonderful means of commemorating Canada’s 150th birthday.
All of the expected Canadian icons are represented, along with some that may be less well know. There were, of course, a pair of moose.
But also, an elk.
A mountie (i.e. a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police)
And a literary Canadian icon–Anne of Green Gables (from the wonderful novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery). Anne fans will appreciate that the piece was called “More scope for imagination.”
In all, there were 33 sculptures made out of plants (i.e. Mosaiculture), representing Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories, along with First Nations peoples and a couple sculptures celebrating horticultural friendship with Shanghai and Beijing (I’ve seen other Mosaiculture exhibits and China is always well represented–their gardeners take this craft seriously). The exhibit was in Jacques Cartier Park, in Gatineau, Quebec, just across the river from Ottawa, Ontario.
I spent a little over two hours walking through MOSAICANADA150 and took many, many photos. In this post I’ll show you some of the sculptures I consider the most interesting to look at. In my next post I’ll share more of the horticultural angle, and show you how the sculptures are created and talk about some of the interesting ways they used some very common plants.
So, let me show you some of the funky things that the Mosaiculture artists/gardeners created:
Muskoxen, grazing on a field of flowers
A small herd of bison
Check out this guy close up–that’s an amazing mane!
Foxes
Fabulous horses–this photo doesn’t capture how magnificent it was to see these larger than life animals as if in full motion. I saw these same horse sculptures at the Mosaiculture exhibit in Montreal in 2013 and felt the same at the time. Seeing them again was worth the drive to Ottawa!
Puffins in front of three sailing ships
Ducks, ready to take flight
“The prospector” panning for gold in the Yukon
A side view
Hockey legend Paul Henderson, scoring the winning goal in the 1972 Russia/Canada game
An Inuit drummer
Look at the detail on the face of the drummer–so much expression!
Amazing! But speaking of faces, the exhibit most designed to wow was the Mother Earth sculpture. Here’s her face, in close-up
Viewed from the West
And from the East…
…Ok, that’s a tightly cropped shot. When truly viewed from the East you couldn’t get away from the crowds. There were a lot of people visiting the exhibit, even though it was a weekday morning in October. But the Mosaiculture team did a good job of laying out the exhibit so that you could, as you’ve seen here, get quite close to all the sculptures and get some “alone time” with them for photos if you wished. I will comment that some people seemed more interested in getting “selfies” in front of the sculptures than actually looking at them; I had to dodge quite a few “selfie sticks”.
Now, for those exhibits from Shanghai and Beijing:
This is a detail of a much larger piece called “Blessing of the Good Omen Dragons”.
This exhibit, “Joyful Celebration of the Nine Lions” was very large. I’m sorry that the front was in shadow, as I know it’s hard to see the detail and appreciate the scope
Perhaps this close up of one of the “nine lions” will help
There were more sculptures than this, of course, but those are my highlights. MOSAICANADA150 is on until October 15, 2017 so there is still a small window of opportunity to see them if you haven’t yet.
I haven’t seen anything detailed recently, but the original government announcement about this exhibit said that works representing each province and territory presented at Jacques-Cartier Park in 2017 will be installed in the 150th anniversary location in 2018–by that, I take it to mean that the exhibits will go to the provinces they represent (“The Prospector” will be heading to the Yukon, Anne of Green Gables will be displayed in Prince Edward Island, etc.). If I learn more, I will update this post.I I Save
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Wow, so beautiful!
For sure! Glad I was able to share it with you via photos.
Looks like a wonderful exhibit. I will say though, that I’m declaring a moratorium on Anne of Green Gables. It is now in the penalty box beside the word “iconic”.
Heresy!
Really fine artwork… thanks for the tour.
Happy to hear you liked it!