Buried amidst the city event calendar on the City of Waterloo’s website sits an entry for the Waterloo Park Art Walk, a set of up to 24 vinyl banners depicting jury-selected art by local artists that is displayed on the Waterloo Park promenade. Not exactly an “event” per se, the selections hang year-round on a series of light poles that span the promenade, running alongside the ION line from Caroline Street in the southeast to Seagram Drive in the northwest.
This art walk was first established with an inaugural class of 24 artists in 2020, and has since been updated annually, with banners rotating out and being replaced by pieces from other local artists. Art is considered by submission, and artists have historically been compensated $400 per piece accepted. According to the city, the art is intended to “[make] reference to the nature, scenery, and/or landscape of the park,” and the artists involved take that prompt and run with it in a number of stylistically diverse directions.
At the time of writing, the city lists 23 active artists on its website (though only 22 of the 24 brackets in the park are filled), and the art in place reflects a variety of art styles and approaches toward how best to represent the park artistically. Current pieces include Freya Marchena Acosta’s hard-lined illustration of the Perimeter Institute, Sly Soper’s cartoon cormorants, and Indigenous artist Ryan Dwight MacTavish’s bird spreading its wings in front of the sun.
The art pieces themselves are mildly let down by the circumstances of the exhibit. Placed on poles that sit awkwardly out of the way, with trees sometimes blocking the art, and empty brackets and one UV-faded promo banner making the whole project look a bit neglected, the Art Walk is not the most dramatic or polished of Waterloo’s public art installations. However, this and other passive public art processes apparently remain priorities to the City of Waterloo. The city allocated almost $880,000 for the implementation of public art in its 2024-2026 budget, and over $5 million dollars in the same budget to the management of Waterloo Park.
This month, the City of Waterloo will begin accepting submissions once again for the next installment of the exhibit. Interested artists can sign up to join the city’s artist roster, a mailing list of people who will be notified whenever the city puts out a call for new public art. Only time will tell whether passive art installations like these, which reflect the cultural and artistic diversity of the City of Waterloo will receive a bit more fanfare and care from their custodians, ultimately bringing more life to the city’s parks and streets.
Contributed photo from Kendra Schmidt
