Downtown Art Scavenger Hunt: Calgary vs Okotoks

You wouldn’t think it would be fair to compare Calgary’s downtown to Okotoks’ when it comes to cultural programming, given Calgary has a huge downtown and population 100+ times larger. Yep, this is a David vs Goliath story.

We love an occasional day trip to Okotoks, so when my vehicle maintenance light came on, I knew it was time to make my annual Okotoks Honda booking and spend a day flaneuring the town. 

Is this a nook or a crannie? It is a very narrow gap between buildings on Okotok’s Main Street and home to one of the 17 fun art installations current on view in their downtown as part of the 6th annual “Nooks & Crannies” Festival.

Here is another nook or crannie that has been utilized for an art installation using various colourful disposalbe plastic items. How many can you identify?

Okotoks’ Funky Downtown

After getting dropped off downtown at Home Ground a coffee house (yes, it is a house) on the main street, we grabbed a coffee and a cranberry scone to share while we waited for the shops to open.  As good flaneurs always do (i.e. always keep eyes and ears open), we both noticed an interesting brochure with the title “Nooks & Crannies” on a rack beside our window table. It turned out to be downtown art scavenger hunt. Wow, what a perfect way to start our morning! The brochure was about the 17 art installations scattered around the downtown, each created out of recyclable materials and all located in off-the-beaten-path nooks and crannies. After finishing our coffee and scone, we were off!

The installations weren’t hard to find (as the brochure includes a map and addresses), but some were in strange places – hanging from trees, in narrow spaces between buildings, and on a fence at the back of an old train station. I was impressed at how the artists often used the site in creative ways.  The quality of the installations was mixed - some kitschy bordering on tacky, others clever and engaging, but all fun.  

We probably spent about 90 minutes wandering the downtown finding the installations and some other fun flaneur finds along the way.  My favourite was Dena Kubota’s huge caterpillar (10+ feet long) made of old telephones tucked away on the grass behind the stairs to the Old Church Theatre.  Each installation included an information panel with a photo of the artist and an artist’s statement that made for interesting reading.  

Then it was off to thrift stores – Bibles for Missions on the northeast edge of downtown and then to the Landfill Thrift Store a few kilometers south of the town. We always find some great treasures; this time it was three vintage putters for $1 each, some hard cover books for 50 cents each.  On the way home, we like to stop in at off-the-beaten-path Countryside Tree & Landscaping as they have some great plants, garden ornaments and a beautiful store.  Last visit we bought a 30-inch-high glass totem-like sculpture made from recycled glass bowls and goblets. This time we found some fun licorice plants and a unique ivy plant and we got the name of the artist to contact for another artwork.

Another fun find on our scavenger hunt was that French 50 Bakery had moved to a house on historic Elma Street, which we returned to for lunch. We had the Jambon Gruyere half baguette sandwich with salad. It was excellent. (Warning: the half baguette at 8 inches long, makes for a hearty lunch). And of course, we had to have the Strawberry Peach Vanilla Cruffin for desert (see photos).  

Everyday Tourist Tip: The “Nooks and Crannies” installations are up until August 24th, 2024, so if you are looking for something fun to do, we highly recommend it. And if you complete the tour, you can take your map with all the symbols identified to the Okotoks Art Gallery (former train station) to potentially win a prize. The scavenger hunt will appeal to all ages.

Close-up showing how the creature has been created old phones. This was my favourite installation.

I love how Okotoks has converted houses into funky retail spaces on Elma Street.

Okotoks has also has a funky main street with cafes, bookstores, art gallery and boutiques.

Yep, Okotoks is one of my HAPPY places.

Brookfield’s Hugman

A buddy emailed me last week saying he found a funky Lego figure when wandering through a downtown Calgary office building and wondered if I knew anything about it. I didn’t but I quickly found out. It was a Brookfield Properties (one of the largest office landlords in the world, including nine million square feet in Calgary) initiative working with California artist Nathan Sawaya to place 43 Hugman in the lobby of their downtown office buildings. They are called “hugman” because they all hug something.

FYI: Nathan Sawaya is a renowned contemporary artist who uses LEGO® bricks exclusively as an art medium. With full-time working studios in New York and Los Angeles, Nathan has 2.5 million LEGO bricks at his immediate disposal to craft large-scale sculptures for collectors, galleries and companies.

Later in the week, I was downtown and made a point of trying to find some of the Hugman.  However, I was very disappointed as probably 50% of the figures were in the same place i.e. hugging the hand-sanitizer posts at the entrances. Also, most of the figures are small, maybe 10 to 12 inches high - and all looked the same except for the colour. I did find a few larger ones in the southeast lobby of Bankers Hall where they were hugging the post of Colette Whiten and Paul Kipps’ Weather Vanes figures with a bit of playfulness to them. But otherwise, I found the Hugman installation uninspiring.  

Hugman is definitely not like the Udderly Art: Colourful Cows for Calgary project in 2000 that saw over one hundred life-size cows, each painted by a different artist grazing in parks, plazas and lobbies in the downtown. One even found its way into the middle of the Prince’s Island lagoon.  Many of the cows had clever, fun and/or meaningful names like Dale Auger’s “Sacred Cow” that paid respect to the spiritual world of Calgary’s First Nations or “Mooney Trader” by Damien Manchuk.  It was fun to see hundreds of families come downtown on the weekends to see the cows. In my opinion, it was the best public art project Calgary has ever seen, maybe the best Canada has ever seen. 

Everyday Tourist Tip: Calgary has an authentic hugman figure on the 5th Avenue side of the Bow Tower. There you will find a life-size figure (with numerous Alberta towns and cities tattooed on his body) hugging a real tree. This artwork was created by world famous public artwork artist Jaume Plensa - and the figure is the artist himself. There is some fun irony in the artist hugging a tree at the base of a corporation office tower in downtown Caglary, home of Canada’s fossil fuel industry.

There is some fun irony in the artist hugging a tree at the base of a corporation office tower in downtown Caglary, home of Canada’s fossil fuel industry.

Last Word

Just like in the David and Goliath story, the little guy (Okotoks) kicks the giant’s (Calgary) butt when it comes to creating engaging art scavenger hunts this summer.