“I had this idea for a long time—I always thought there should be a formalized recognition of the East Van cross graffiti that had haunted Vancouver for decades. I remember it was always in chalk form or marker form, and some would scrub it off. It’d disappear and reappear. And, interestingly enough, before I did it, I canvassed a lot of people wherever—even if it was at a coffee shop—and very few people remembered it. And then when it was commissioned, everyone said, oh I remember that. It was really kind of amazing. The timing was perfect. That’s the thing about successful public art. A lot of it you can’t control, but the timing was perfect: 2010 celebratory Olympics, Vancouver real estate going through the roof, so that you had real estate agents making the pitch that there’s no divide between the east and west sides of Vancouver anymore, because a basic bungalow in east Vancouver is a million dollars. So that was the argument. But I always thought, well, that doesn’t acknowledge the history of east Vancouver. And second of all that’s not entirely true, because most poor people, in fact all poor people, live on the east side.”
Art & Influence
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Installation view of Monument for East Vancouver, 2010
Collection City of Vancouver. Photo: Rachel Topham.