While surfing Flipboard recently, I was intrigued by Jacquelyne Germain’s review of Lori Zimmer’s new book “Art Hiding in Paris” in the Smithsonian Magazine. I immediately thought of Calgary and the dozens of artworks hidden in the lobbies of the office towers, along the downtown’s unique +15 indoor walkway and along the Bow River Promenade.

Zimmer invites visitors to Paris to “go beyond the walls of art museums and instead experience the city’s veiled masterpieces—whether on public transit, on the grounds of a cemetery or in a retired brothel. Though many of the works of art included in the book are tucked away in unexpected locations, all are accessible to the public.” Sounds like flaneuring fun to me.

Hiding in downtown Calgary

Calgary’s downtown is full of hidden art because of the City’s Bonus Density program, initiated in the early ‘70s, which has allowed developers to add more floors to proposed new buildings than zoning allows in return for various public improvements, such as like adding public art to their projects. As a result, almost every new tower over the past 50+ years has public art outside and inside the buildings. Today, literally hundreds of sculptures, statues, paintings and murals are located downtown, making it a mega public art gallery.

While many are in prominent locations where workers and visitors will easily encounter them, others are hidden where you might least expect them (e.g., in elevator waiting areas, second floor plazas or etched on the glass of a +15 bridge).

While not all are masterpieces, some are by famous international artists including two Jean-Paul Riopelle paintings, a Jaume Plensa self-portrait sculpture and three Dale Chihuly glass chandeliers.

Side Note: There are lots more hidden artworks if we look beyond the downtown and Bow River Promenade, but I’ll save that for a future blog.

Eighth Avenue Place (525 - 8th Ave SW)

Not only does the Eighth Avenue Place (EAP) twin office tower complex have a dramatic cathedral-like lobby, but each of the elevator waiting areas has a painting by a well-respected Canadian artist. Walk into EAP from 8th Ave SW and you’ll find a large Jack Shadbolt painting (Wild Grass Suite, a five-panel painting 17 feet long and 5 feet high) your first clue this lobby is something distinctive. But unless you are going to visit someone in the offices above, you would never know every elevator lobby is a grotto-like space, each paying homage to a respected 20th century Canadian painter – Jean-Paul Riopelle, Jack Bush, Jean McEwan, Marcelle Ferron, Yves Gaucher, William Ronald, Marcell Barbeau and another Jack Shadbolt.

And for those into vintage furniture, there are Arne Jacobsen chairs (1956), Eero Saarinen coffee tables (1956) and Florence Knoll Benches (1954). Even the Starbucks café doesn’t look like a cookie-cutter Starbucks.

Learn more: EAP: Our Art

William Ronald, Maya, 1957, oil on canvas, 48’ x 36'‘

Jean-Paul Riopelle, Waves, 1959, 26”x32”

Jack Shadbolt, Northern Emblem (No. 1 murals study). 1967, oil/lucite on canvas, 79'“x48”

Aquitaine Tower (540 - 5th Ave SW)

Wander along the north side of the 500 block of 5th Avenue and mid-block take the stairs up to a secret plaza that is home to “Moonstairs (1969)” by Jacqueline Badord. The information panel reads, “Moonstairs is made up of 800 aluminum modules cast in Paris and assembled in Calgary by Badord’s husband and son. Sculptures created from the module may be found in locations throughout the world. Moonstairs is the largest at a height of 7 meters. The artist described Moonstairs as a design to occupy space, with the interpretation of it left largely to the imagination of the observer.”

This site is interesting for another reason – it is one of the early examples of Calgary’s unique +15 system, where office buildings were designed with second floor (15 feet above ground) amenity spaces (meeting rooms, cafes, bistros, food courts) along with a pedestrian bridge over the street to neighbouring buildings so you don’t have to go outside.

The Aquitaine Tower’s second floor was designed to house a restaurant and conference theatre on its second floor spilling out to the plaza with the sculpture as its anchor.

A +15 pedestrian bridge was planned to connect the office building to London House next door.

FYI: Today, there are 86 elevated pedestrian bridges in Calgary’s downtown connecting 100+ office, hotel, retail, cultural and residential towers to create a 16-km (non-contiguous) indoor walkway. Full of cafes, restaurants, gardens, shops, medical offices and other everyday amenities. It is a hidden futuristic streetscape created so pedestrians don’t have to deal with Calgary’s harsh winter climate and/or cars/traffic at street level. For many downtowners, the Plus 15 is a hidden oasis.

Side Note: Calgary’s Plus 15 walkway was the subject of the movie “Way Downtown” where two downtown workers challenge each other to see how long they would live without going outside.

Jamieson Place (308 - 4th Ave SW)

On the Plus 15 level (second floor) of the Jamieson Place office tower is a 25,000 square foot winter garden. In the middle, is its infinity pool with three Dale Chihuly (probably the world’s best known glass artist) glass chandeliers hanging above. Each chandelier is made up of 400 pieces of hand-blown glass in soft yellow, blue and amber colours assembled on site by the artist. The pieces were inspired by the idea of viewing a garden through abstract glass flowers. While it is called a Winter Garden, it is a tranquil place to sit and reflect anytime of year.

FYI: While there, don’t miss the artwork hanging from the ceiling above the escalator in the building’s lobby. Look up to find Dennis Oppenheim’s “Pathways to Everywhere, An Exploration,” which is very fitting given its location at the top of the escalator leading to downtown’s Plus 15 walkways, i.e., a pathway to almost everywhere in the downtown. The sculpture consists of overlapping infinity-shaped pieces with sandblasted grey, blue and clear acrylic, aluminum framed revolving doors suspended from the atrium ceiling. Hang around and you will see the revolving doors rotate every minute.

+15 Bridge (8th Avenue Between 6th and 7 St SW)

Back in 2015, I wrote a blog titled “DREAM: Calgary’s best kept public art secret?” about Derek Besant’s artworks etched into the windows of the +15 bridge over 8th Ave between 6th and 7th Streets SW.

Installed in 1996, the piece consists of 24 ghost-like images on the windows of the bridge, each accompanied by a short statement.

One side contains “thoughts about a woman” while the opposite sides are “thoughts about a man.”

Because of the transparency and reflections of the glass, you must look carefully to read the text and see the sketches against the backdrop of the street life below and the architecture that surrounds them.

The somewhat cryptic images and text make them intriguing and open to many interpretations. The text could easily be the thoughts of those people who cross the bridge at any time of the day. They are open-ended statements about the male/female relationship.

It creates a voyeuristic sense of place, which somehow seems both appropriate and inappropriate as you spy on the world below from the unique perspective of the +15 bridge.

In fact, the entire +15 walkway is a bit of a hidden gem for downtown visitors who often are not sure what to make of them - or how to use them.

Learn more: DREAM: Calgary’s best kept public art secret.

Bow Tower (Corner of Centre Street and 5th Ave SW)

It is hard to miss the 12-meter high white head on the plaza at the entrance to Bow Tower! It is by world famous Spanish artist, Jaume Plensa and titled “Wonderland.” What many people don’t know is that there is a second Plensa sculpture on the back side of the same building.

Titled “Alberta’s Dream,” it depicts a life-size, sitting figure (Plensa himself) hugging a small tree on a round base.

The skin of the figure has the names of many of Alberta’s cities and towns tattooed on it.

Given Calgary is the energy (fossil fuel) capital of Canada and the building was built for a major Canadian oil and gas company, my personal interpretation of the piece is that it is a political comment on Calgary as Canada’s fossil fuel capital i.e., a lone environmentalist (tree hugger) sits out of sight at the back of the building trying to understand the impact fossil fuels have and are making on the world around us.

I was and am always amazed at how little attention this artwork gets given its political statement.

However, it turns out Plensa has created numerous “Self Portrait with a Tree” pieces around the world as his statement about the relationship between man and nature and our need to love nature. The artist often refers to the human body as a fantastic container of dreams. Inspired by diverse ethnicities and races, often immigrants, Jaume Plensa’s public sculptures of young innocent girls as in “Wonderland” stand for the artist’s utopian vision of a world without boundaries.

Whatever your interpretation, the interplay between the two Jaume pieces at Bow Tower is not only hidden but thought provoking.

LRT Canopy (7th Ave and 6th St SW)

Downtown’s 7th Avenue is the city’s transit corridor for buses and trains. Each station has public art integrated into its design, often into the glass canopy above. “Swarm” by Stuart Keeler consists of thousands of ash tree seed images (commonly called “keys” they turn brown in the autumn fall to the ground in winter and spring) integrated into the glass canopy of the 6th Street LRT Station.

The artist chose digital screened film on laminated glass to enliven this station with colour and imagery.

The colour fields are based on old mapping history, creating a grid of squares - a natural field of warm colour casts shadows onto the pavement below, creating a fun unexpected ever-changing pattern to entertain those waiting on the platform.

Wander along downtown’s 7th Avenue Transit Corridor and you will find hidden art at each station.

Bow River Sculptures (from Peace Bridge to Pumphouse Theatre)

Wander west from downtown along the Bow River Promenade just east of the 14th Street SW bridge you will come upon nine sandstone sculptures in the Nat Christie park - a narrow strip of grass between the Bow River and Bow Trail (Calgary calls all its freeways trails). The park is a legacy to the Stone Sculptures Guild of North America’s symposium held in Prince’s Island Park in the summer of 1998. The sculptures are all made of 60,000-year-old local Paskapoo sandstone, the same stone used for the many early 20th Century sandstone buildings in downtown including Calgary’s old City Hall.

FYI: Find more sandstone sculptures from the Guild in the middle of downtown along 3rd Street SW between 7th Avenue and 3rd Ave SW, also known as Barclay Mall, a pedestrian-friendly street linking the downtown core to the Bow River. In Europe they would call this a “woonerf” as the street has wide sidewalks, with large planters, lots of trees and a winding road designed to slow traffic. Pedestrians have the right of way all along the street. Don’t be surprised if you are standing at the edge of the sidewalk and a driver stops to let you cross.

Continue wandering west along the Bow River pathway (the Promenade narrows to become a path as you go further west) and you will come upon three artworks. The large metal piece by Kathryn Fodchuk Dobbin titled “Comet” is a kinetic sculpture that captures the celestial quality of a comet streaking across the sky. There is another Guild sandstone sculpture as well as “Amy’s Chair,” a fun bench that combines a bright red metal bench with a rock. The artwork pays homage to Joyce Doolittle’s (a pioneer and champion of contemporary theater in Calgary) daughter Amy who died of ALS as a young adult.

Head back along the Bow River pathway/promenade and at the Peace Bridge, Santiago Calatrava’s pedestrian bridge (you can’t miss it, as it is BRIGHT red) there is a plaza/park with a well-hidden artwork. Look down and you will see small metal coin-like objects embedded into the concrete; this is “Delta Garden + The City Unseen,” an artwork by Caitland r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett. Its 12,000 brass survey monuments (think large coins) create a shimmering river of sediment drifting through the delta-shaped garden/plaza. Each monument has text on, text gathered through The Invisible Survey - a public survey named after the Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Calgarians were asked two questions: Where are you going? Where do you want to be?

Over time, the some of the brass monuments will wear and tarnish, while the most-travelled routes will get polished underfoot.

Delta Garden + The City Unseen,” by Caitland r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett.

Last Word

There are literally hundreds of other artworks hidden in Calgary’s downtown core and City Centre, so if you are interested in art and love exploring urban streets, parks, plazas and alleys, keep your eyes open and you are sure to find lots of fun things.

Other Relevant Blogs:

University of Calgary’s Public Art Gets No Respect!

FFQing in Downtown Calgary’s Udderly Art Pasture

Calgary Hidden Gems: Dozens of public artworks hiding downtown