Tonight we went to Kitchener for BK Thursday, and we stopped to check out some public art at a regional transit hub just down the street from the drive-through. I'm not sure when this bird sculpture (or its mate located a little further down on the other side of the path) was installed because this is not an area I frequent anymore and I haven't been using public transit lately, but it must be relatively recent (within the past few years).
I did some online research about the bird sculptures after we got home. The birds are meant to be a tribute to the traditional art of the founders of our region, which was cool for me to see; their traditional art is my traditional art as Kitchener's founder was my 4th great-grandfather (and family birthday twin... only he was 201 years older). My aunt, who now lives in Alberta, is/was an artist who worked predominantly in our cultural folk art so I've grown up around it and am quite familiar with it. She even taught me some as a child. I'm not an artist and rarely do it (the only such thing I've done remotely recently was make a Christmas ornament for Christopher in my culture's traditional folkart style, back in 2019), but I definitely have knowledge of the motifs, colours, etc-- and still know how to properly make a dipping pen out of a feather, lol.
These birds look more like real birds than the traditional folk art ones tend to, but I have to say that they reminded me of the folk art birds before I knew that they were meant to have any relation, so I guess the artist did a good job! They also remind me of pigeons, which I kind of like because pigeons are so much associated with city life, and that blend between the traditional art and the city birds speaks to me. It makes me think of how much growth has come out of the little community my ancestor started. I didn't know him, obviously, but from the stories passed through the generations etc, I think overall he'd be happy with what this place has become.
