[PHOTO] U.V. Ceti by Andrew Posa, ten years later

I visited the Andrew Posa 1982 sculpture U.V. Ceti, poised in the middle of a temporarily quiet fountain, last night.

It had been ten years since I had last paid particular attention to that statue, attracted by its name the astronomical reference to nearby flare star Luyten 726-8 B.

Front view of UV Ceti, 30 Wellington Street East

Sculptor Andrew Posa chose the name UV Ceti, this Flickr photo and commentary suggests, because it was an obscure astronomical name. I’m a bit sad that I didn’t photograph the message in garbled Hungarian that’s apparently written inside the statue.

This statue was dedicated to one Edward Isaac Richmond, 1908-1982, “A kind man who shared his love of beauty.” A quick googling turns up this 2007 article from The Globe and Mail, which reveals Edward Isaac Richmond to have been an architect of note.

Frank Richmond remembers the time his father, architect Edward Isaac Richmond, heard about a unique house party where guests were handed sledgehammers with their drinks and encouraged to take a few swipes at whatever struck their fancy. It was an old house, and the architect who’d purchased it was having it bulldozed the next day in order to build something new.

“My father was so upset by this because he viewed a home as almost a holy place,” Mr. Richmond says. “When you demolish a building, there had to be a degree of respect.”

[. . .]

The architect’s own striking 1948 home, which he occupied until just before his death in 1982 at age 73 (and where son Frank lived until 1998), is right where he left it at 37 Burton Rd. And while it may have been a shocker to frill-obsessed, WASPy, postwar Toronto, his practice flourished. “That home got replicated in hundreds of different kinds of iterations [post-1948 and] for the next 15-odd years,” his son confirms.

Perhaps that’s because the 1931 University of Toronto graduate, one of the first Jewish architects in Toronto — if not the very first, his son suggests — had many Jewish clients eager to eliminate painful reminders of the old world, even architectural ones.

In a career that lasted a half-century, Ed Richmond worked on the old Mount Sinai hospital on Yorkville Avenue (a part of its façade is currently undergoing restoration and will be incorporated into a condo) during a short-lived partnership with Ben Kaminker in the early thirties. By the seventies, he was designing high-rise towers, including Palace Pier 1 on the Etobicoke waterfront.

The John Warkentin book Creating Memory: A Guide to Public Outdoor Sculpture in Toronto says this of this statue: “The sculpture reveals fundamental natural forces: within this maelstrom something new is occurring, possibly the beginning of a civilization. It is a much more substantial sculpture than is found in most late-twentieth century Toronto condominiums.”

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: TTC, Bombardier, Lightspell, Harbord war memorials, Water Nymphs

• blogTO reports on the desire of the TTC to take over transit issues generally in the City of Toronto, down to the level of Toronto Islands ferries.
• The apology from Bombardier’s president for the streetcar faults is, to my mind, not nearly enough. What will come of the TTC? What will come of Bombardier, too? The Toronto Star reports.
• If the TTC finally gets the Lightspell public art installation going at the Pioneer Village station, I will be pleased. blogTO reports.
• Richard Longley at NOW Toronto reports on the world war memorials at Harbord Collegiate Institute, speaking of alumni lost in these two conflicts.
• Jamie Bradburn wrote about the Water Nymphs Club, a swim team sponsored by the Toronto Evening Telegram back in the 1920s.

[PHOTO] Three sculptures by Rodin at the Met (@metmuseum)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of Rodin is superb.

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[PHOTO] Hallway of sculpture at the Met (@metmuseum)

[PHOTO] The welded sculptures of Eric Schurman, at the Eptek Centre, Summerside PEI

On the Saturday before last, one of my two Island Caturday posts featured the work of Eric Schurman. As described in Summerside’s Journal-Pioneer, that city’s Eptek Centre is hosting an exhibit of the welded sculptures of local metalworker Eric Schurman, of Malpeque Fine Iron.

Schurman’s work appeals to me for its ingenuity and its whimsy, its ability to use the curves and straight lines of pieces of metal and some paint to evoke entire creatures..

[PHOTO] Front yard robot, Kensington Market, Toronto

I’m not quite sure what this, and the other sculptures, on the front yard of the home at Augusta and Wales towards the south of Kensington Market is supposed to be. “Robot” was my best guess.

[PHOTO] Sand sculpture of Province House, Confederation Landing Park, Charlottetow

[PHOTO] Three entries from the International Sand Sculpting Competition, CNE

The CNE’s International Sand Sculpting Competition is a face-off, where previous winners of the Exhibition’s sand sculpting competition face off.

Visible as soon as one enters the Direct Energy Centre is the winner, Ilya Filimontsev‘s Matador.

My personal favourite was Mélineige Beauregard‘s It’s About Love.

Rich Varano and his Sand Game of Thrones, meanwhile, is gorgeous. Would that my sand castles were as accomplished!