Continuum

Public art not only has to provide an aesthetic experience for those who pass by it, but it often has the added challenge of having to harmoniously fit into and define a space. Continuum, created by industrial design team of Cezary and Danielle Gajewski, has the enviable position of, well, its position: suspended in alcoves, surrounded on all sides by glass walls. The three forms are suspended at the entrances of the Century Park LRT station, contrasting the modernist lines of glass and aluminum with Continuum’s roundness and playful evocation of nature. 

The artists both have a background in industrial and interior design, as evident in Continuum’s structure and architectural detail. Continuum consists of three wire spheres, covered with hundreds of maple leaf forms of water-jet cut aluminum. The leaves are spaced so that light can be seen through the sphere. It is an airy bubble of near-nature, visible from most angles by the many commuters who move throughout the building.

The pieces work with the transparency of the glass and apparent lightness of the spheres, which are powder-coated red, yellow, blue and green to bring a sense of seasonality and heighten our connection to nature— the template of leaf itself is taken from a fallen leaf collected by the artists from a tree on the University of Alberta campus, which they scanned and traced, and then scaled up to various sizes. At night, they will be illuminated from below, to give a sense that they are floating.