Vancouver�s Coolest Public Art: 'We' by Jaume Plensa

Where: Sunset Beach, Vancouver, Canada

Photo: Ted Topping

Vancouver is still basking in the afterglow of the 2010 Winter Olympics and one of the best remnants of the Games is the public art that now decorates the city�s parks and buildings. For the next few weeks (actually this the final one!), Jaunted's Vancouver Embed Tuija Seipell of The Cool Hunter will be reporting on the best of the bunch.

When I first saw this sculpture that sits on the small hill overlooking Sunset Beach, I dubbed it �Letterhead.� Without knowing its story, I felt it spoke many languages and looked friendly and open in its lacy lightness. To my surprise, I wasn�t too far wrong with this.

The sculpture is called "We" and the artist, world-renown Barcelona-born Jaume Plensa, describes it as a celebration of linguistic diversity, a fitting topic for the multicultural and multilingual Vancouver. Plensa has created the hollow sitting human figure, a �human container,� using random letters from eight alphabets—Latin, Greek, Russian Cyrillic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Arabic and Chinese. The sculpture is made of painted aluminum and it is beautifully lit from below at night.

Photo: Ted Topping

Unthreatening and unimposing, "We" attracts people to pose inside it, sit on its arm and spread their blankets next to it. The sculpture is part of the Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale (2009-2011). It is also part of the cool interactive game for kids, K-Crew Detectives: Case of the English Bay Bandits.

Photo: Ted Topping

To extend your artsy fun, walk a few steps down the hill from the sculpture to the Seawall and hop on one of the cute little False Creek Ferries, which will take you the short way across to Granville Island. You can easily spend a whole day there exploring the artists� and artisans� studios and shops, having lunch at the Public Market and catching a play at Arts Club Theatre.

This post closes the series on Vancouver�s Coolest Public Art. Special thanks to Ted Topping for most of the images. Also thanks for information and images to Emily Armstrong of Tourism Vancouver, to Wendy Soobis, former communications lead at Cultural Olympiad, and to Bryan Newson, City of Vancouver�s Manager of Public Art Program.

Have you spotted any other cool outdoor art in Vancouver or other cities that you think deserves to be featured? Let us know in the comments!

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