December 04, 2009 05:11 PM
by David Fleischer
The Township of King is going to the wall to preserve a unique piece of its artistic heritage.
At its Monday night meeting King Council voted 6-1 in favour of awarding heritage protection to Shift, an outdoor instillation by Richard Serra.
The sculpture, a zig-zagging concrete wall built on farmland near Dufferin Street and King Road, was threatened by a development proposal from Hickory Hills Investments, a subsidiary of Great Gulf Homes.
"People were surprised, but it just had to be done," King Mayor Margaret Black said.
"Everybody wanted to protect it, it was a question of how do you do it," Ms Black said.
The issue first came to the fore with a development proposal nearly two years ago and a committee was struck to negotiate an agreement.
Great Gulf vice-president Haydn Matthews told the town there were concerns Shift would draw the public's attention, potentially leading to trespassing and vandalism, a Feb. 2008 staff report states.
The town hoped to pick specific days, or even a "Doors Open" event, when the public could access the site.
After two years of negotiation the town and the developer arrived at a draft agreement in which Great Gulf promises not to harm, alter or destroy the sculpture, but also denies any responsibility for repairing or maintaining it.
That left the town no choice, Ms Black said.
"It's an international piece of art sitting in our own backyard," said Elaine Robertson, a former head of King's heritage committee who worked on Shift the past five years.
The committee's current co-chair, Fiona Cowles, said most residents didn't know the piece was there and she didn't see it until being told by cross-country skiing enthusiasts.
"It's an amazing piece. You come upon it as part of a rolling landscape," she said.
It was the committee's recommendation council seek designation.
"We were just jubilant the mayor and council decided to take the stand they did," Ms Robertson said.
"I'm very heartened by what's happened so far. One just never knows how these things are going to evolve," Mr. Serra said in a phone interview.
Mr. Serra is an American artist dubbed "The Man of Steel" for the monumental steel sculptures he has created for urban spaces around the world, including Terminal 1 at Pearson airport. His The Matter of Time is a centrepiece of Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum and other pieces are prominently displayed at New York's Museum of Modern Art
Shift was created between 1970 and 1972 for the site's owner, art collector Roger Davidson.
The lands, some of which are on the Oak Ridges Moraine, were sold to Great Gulf decades ago.
King will seek a cultural heritage landscape designation for the site, a new designation most recently used for Richmond Hill's David Dunlap Observatory. It offers protection for viewscapes and other elements spread across a site as opposed to a single structure.
Development was already approved for a portion of the lands but it is now on hold since the designation applies to the entire 170-acres and is considered in effect pending the completion of a heritage bylaw.
Great Gulf is considering its options following Monday's decision, the company's lawyer, Chris Barnett said.
If Great Gulf appeals the designation, a hearing before the province's Conservation Review Board may follow.
"If it gets to that point, I'll be on an airplane," said Mr. Serra, who hasn't returned to the site since it was created.
Even if the sculpture is protected it would continue to be on private property, something Ms Robertson acknowledged.
"In a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful world, wouldn't it be amazing if the developers decided to make it part of a parkland? That would be an amazing gift to the township," she said.
Mr. Serra similarly hoped plans will include public access.
"If (the owners) don't appeal the decision, I'm going to get very much involved with access, upkeep and whatever I can to do to make it permanent," he said.
"It was built as a work of art for people to enjoy and to see and to participate with."
Last year he told the Toronto Star a lot of art can be traced back to Shift.
"To me it was a breakthrough piece ... There wasn't any precursor for that kind of work," he said.
WHAT IS SHIFT?
The sculpture consists of six concrete walls, each five feet long and eight inches thick but of varying lengths. It spans two hills and encompasses more than 15 acres.
Each section begins at ground level and continues until the land has dropped five feet.
"One of the things that it does do is when you walk it measures your distance in relation to the landscape so it allows you to understand the shift in elevation as you're walking because there's no set horizon there," Mr. Serra said.
"The boundaries of the work became the maximum distance two people could occupy and still keep each other in view," Mr. Serra told Arts Magazine in 1973.
"What I wanted was a dialectic between one's perception of the place in the totality and one's relation to the field as walked," he said.
"The intent of the work is an awareness of physicality in time, space and motion ... As one follows the work father back into the field, one is forced to shift and turn with the work and look back."
