Silent Song
Wood, gold leaf, 144 × 96 × 14 in. (co-artist Charlotte Wall).
Installation view: Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, BC.
Silent Song was commissioned by Christ Church Cathedral to coincide with the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics Winter Games. The artists created the work of art as a response to the need to provide a space for contemplation within the church for the large number of visitors from all over the world who planned to visit Vancouver’s oldest church situated in the heart of the city at one of the busiest intersections at the centre of Vancouver.
Silent Song acknowledges that a calm environment and visual catalysts, as well as the role of sound and silence, are important aspects of reflective meditation. The sculpture is intended to evoke remembered or imagined sounds and can be considered a metaphor for many diverse individual voices conjoined together in musical patterns.
Silent Song is composed of 32 of the retired organ parts of the Casavant & Frere organ installed in Christ Church Cathedral in 1947 which, in turn, had incorporated pipes from the previous organ. The Casavant organ served the congregation for 54 years and now 1700 of its pipes live on in the new Kenneth Jones tracker action pipe organ installed in Christ Church Cathedral in 2004. The remaining organ parts were stored in the barn of one of the church’s parishioners. For the creation of the site-specific sculpture, these organ pipes were carefully resurfaced to a golden luster, assembled into a composition of visual rhythms and gold leaf applied at the pipe openings illuminating the threshold of sound and silence in song.
Commissioned by Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, BC.
Silent Song
Wood, gold leaf, 144 × 96 × 14 in. (co-artist Charlotte Wall).
Installation view: Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, BC.
Silent Song was commissioned by Christ Church Cathedral to coincide with the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics Winter Games. The artists created the work of art as a response to the need to provide a space for contemplation within the church for the large number of visitors from all over the world who planned to visit Vancouver’s oldest church situated in the heart of the city at one of the busiest intersections at the centre of Vancouver.
Silent Song acknowledges that a calm environment and visual catalysts, as well as the role of sound and silence, are important aspects of reflective meditation. The sculpture is intended to evoke remembered or imagined sounds and can be considered a metaphor for many diverse individual voices conjoined together in musical patterns.
Silent Song is composed of 32 of the retired organ parts of the Casavant & Frere organ installed in Christ Church Cathedral in 1947 which, in turn, had incorporated pipes from the previous organ. The Casavant organ served the congregation for 54 years and now 1700 of its pipes live on in the new Kenneth Jones tracker action pipe organ installed in Christ Church Cathedral in 2004. The remaining organ parts were stored in the barn of one of the church’s parishioners. For the creation of the site-specific sculpture, these organ pipes were carefully resurfaced to a golden luster, assembled into a composition of visual rhythms and gold leaf applied at the pipe openings illuminating the threshold of sound and silence in song.
Commissioned by Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, BC.