ReviewOsborne Street bridge becomes a work of art

The end result isn't an immense, attention-grabbing monument but a slow, quiet, interactive experience, something that will sneak up on you gradually as you bike, walk or drive by.

—Alison Gillmor, reviewer

It's officially the coolest neighbourhood in Canada.

Now Osborne Village has a cool new public art project that celebrates its unique history and quirky character. From Here Until Now, by Winnipeg-based architect-artists Eduardo Aquino and Karen Shanski, makes the massive Osborne Street bridge into a surprisingly delicate concrete-and-aluminium poem.

(The project has been underway since last year but marks its official lighting-up with a public opening on Nov. 7.)

The design was developed through the Winnipeg Arts Council's innovative public art program. The process was collaborative, with Shanski and Aquino working with community groups and neighbourhood residents.

The end result isn't an immense, attention-grabbing monument but a slow, quiet, interactive experience, something that will sneak up on you gradually as you bike, walk or drive by.

From Here Until Now is not added-on but actually embedded in the bridge construction itself. As you travel along the bridge, you'll see that some of the balustrades contain text, rendered in digitally-cut aluminium plates and backlit with LEDs. Many of these phrases are taken from surveys in which residents related anecdotes or wrote about memories, dreams and hopes.

There are clipped factual statements ("jail, pickle factory, brewery") but also snips of free-floating, enigmatic beauty ("the horizon from high above"). As well, the four corners of the bridge are anchored with panels depicting incised plans of four key structures -- the shabby but venerable Roslyn Court Apartments, the 1980s-era Evergreen Towers, the Manitoba Legislature and the historic Granite Club (which is represented by a gorgeous perspectival "drawing" of its curling sheets).

Aquino and Shanski celebrate the Osborne area as a place but also as an accrual of time, some layers still visible, others changed or buried. And they suggest that, like all good neighbourhoods, the Village is an ongoing process of interactions and intersections. The artwork reflects this: One of the phrases is "discussions can continue."

They will.