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Giant-this and Largest-that
There are very few people who would care to stick their necks out and pontificate on what constitutes ‘good’ art—and I am certainly not one of them. But I am prepared to say that if art, regardless of its intrinsic merits, makes people laugh, that is a good thing.
Case in point: the 14 statues in Morton Park overlooking English Bay in the downtown west end of Vancouver by Chinese artist Yue Minjun, officially named A-maze-ing Laughter. Acquired by the City of Vancouver for a knock-down price of $1.5 million, the cluster of larger than life figures of a man in various states of extreme laughter draws a constant stream of visitors. And the way most people react to the statues is uncanny: they let their guard down; they mug, grin and embrace. The per-visitor cost of the work just keeps going down as the good vibes dividend just keeps going up.
Far be it from me to suggest we all travel to Vancouver to get in on the laughter. There’s a piece of public art not far from the County that engenders the same reaction. As I discovered last week, it’s the Campbellford Giant Toonie monument.
We had been driving to Frankford for lunch, but strangely developed a simultaneous hankering for cheese curds and chocolate, so decided to make a pilgrimage to Campbellford to the Empire Cheese Factory and the World’s Finest Chocolate store.
Since we had our daughter visiting us (from Vancouver, ironically), we decided to show her the monument while we were at it: it would allow us to develop a cover story that we had felt it our duty to steep her in Canadian history (so that the cheese and chocolate purchases could be characterized as an afterthought). Not everyone knows that the toonie was designed by a Campbellford resident, and that Campbellford was named the official home of the two-dollar coin in 1997 by the Royal Canadian Mint. (Mind you, not everybody cares.)
We had anticipated that the monument would be worth a brief one-minute stop, so we were surprised to find ourselves spending a good half hour in its company. The reason? We encountered a 60ish couple in gales of laughter. The wife was taking pictures of the husband mugging his way through a series of contortions, all of which were designed to create the photographic illusion that he was lifting the coin, struggling with it on his shoulders like some modern day Atlas, or balancing it delicately on his fingertips. When they saw us, they broke out into sheepish grins—but to their credit they carried on with their posing and laughing, despite the fact that they now had an audience. It was infectious, and after they had finished we tried our hands at posing as well.That’s my daughter Erica holding the toonie in the picture.
Our positive experience with the Campbellford toonie made me think that Giant-this and Largestthat pieces are more than reflections of civic pride: they are surefire laughter generators, and people who laugh tend to part with their money more easily than people who frown. It made me wonder whether the County is missing its chance to get in on the action.
Sudbury, for instance, has the Big Nickel; Wawa, the Giant Canada Goose; and Drumheller, Alberta, the World’s Biggest Dinosaur. I’ll wager all three are glad they took the initiative; and there are all kinds of less well known ‘Big’ monuments—which Reader’s Digest has thoughtfully put into a list. There’s the World’s Largest Hockey Stick, in Duncan B.C.; the World’s Largest Axe in Nackawic, New Brunswick; the World’s Largest Fiddle, in Sydney, Nova Scotia; and the Giant Lawnmower in Enderby, B.C. I could go on.
So what is the County to do? Move fast, or course— the squid, mosquito and spider are already spoken for —but move purposefully too. Is there an object that symbolizes the County, that will qualify as neither good nor bad art because it makes people laugh, but that will not compromise the hip aura that the County wears these days. A giant grape is one idea, but somehow it doesn’t capture the imagination: it might be mistaken for a giant prune. But how about a giant corkscrew? That would put the County squarely on the world oenophilic charts. Or, if that were not feasible, how about a giant can of tomatoes? Or a monster size sheaf of barley?
Having sat the cat among the pigeons, I will sign off so that I can finish all the cheese and chocolate from my Campbellford excursion before this edition of The Times hits the streets, so I won’t feel any guilt over not sharing them with you. And then I’ll be off to Colborne to see the Big Apple. I’m going to take the pictures; I’ll let my wife pretend she’s holding it up.
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