Vancouver BC - Art around the city

As we walked and rode around Vancouver, there was art everywhere.

Much of this was due to the Vancouver Biennale:

http://www.vancouverbiennale.com/

Their web page describes it as every two years, turning the city into "an open air art museum". That seems like a pretty good description. We only saw the sculpture aspects, but there were clusters of sculpture everywhere.

In theory these installations are temporary, but many of them stay on, like A-maze-ing Laughter:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/10/why-are-you-laughing-5m-secures-vancouvers-beloved-smiling-statues-but-what-do-they-really-mean/

While the festival is certainly responsible for some of the art, I have to feel that it was building on an existing tradition, and appreciation for artwork. There wouldn't be the sustained interest otherwise, and many of these pieces do not come from the festival.

However, much of the artwork is still pretty new. My favorite piece was Digital Orca, by Douglas Coupland, next to the Vancouver Convention Centre. It is designed to make you think of pixelated images, but my first thought was that it looked like it had been built out of Legos. (It is actually powder covered steel.)

Digital Orca is from 2009, like many of the other pieces that were part of the Convention Centre's Art Project. There were other projects as well, reflecting the city's growth, both in population and wealth, so perhaps it felt like a growth in culture was required as well.