Lost Streams
 various
Kitsilano
various
Community
1994
Site-integrated work
In place
City of Vancouver
Lost Streams
Description of work
The artist mapped the streams that used to flow through the neighbourhood and created markers in the ground along the routes of these lost streams. The Kitsilano Community Centre has the information on the project. Copper map installations can be seen at Kitsilano Beach just south of the playground; Volunteer Park at Point Grey Road; at the foot of Bayswater, and at Jericho Beach approx. 100 m. west of the concession.
Artist statement
This project was the result of a long process of researching and photographing the local landscape and consultation with members of the community, Park Board and the School Board. The work consists of 16 in-ground and 4 above ground markers installed along the routes of four historical streams that once existed in Kitsilano. Each of the in-ground markers has the words LOST STREAM engraved around the outer edge. Each marker also contains engraved words on two themes; first, along the edges, two-word phrases for the agents of the demise of the stream e.g. "Logging railway" and second, in the centre, four kinds of plant and animal life that have disappeared e.g. "sockeye, thimbleberry, lynx and fir". Artist Marian Penner Bancroft writes, "...my desire became to find a way of recalling what was now invisible, of marking the routes of the streams and in doing so to call up an earlier image of this place, to bring some history into the present... I also installed at (Kitsilano) Community Centre a set of black and white photographs, two for each (stream) path. These are close up images of where the streams once were, paired with images of trees that are fed by the underground flows, those vestiges of another landscape." -from the Vancouver Park Board web site
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