Art 3261/3262: Art NOW Assignment 1 Fall 2026 | University of Lethbridge

Art 3261/3262: Art NOW Fall 2026

Assignment 1
Due: Friday, Oct. 9

Write on the following topic. In developing your response, draw on artists’ presentations and related resources, citing fully all sources that you use. Informed by these, aim to develop and add your own independent critical commentary and assessments. (See course outline for general directions on writing assignments and on AI use.

Like many cities throughout the world, the City of Lethbridge adopted and administers a public art policy, commissioning public artworks, funded through a percentage of costs of municipal projects, including public buildings, infrastructure (including transit), and parks. In Lethbridge: ‘The policy is funded by 1% of community services capital projects… from each Capital Improvement Program (CIP).’

Public Art

‘The City of Lethbridge supports the acquisition of public art which is a vital part of our community’s culture. Public art creates a distinct and vibrant legacy for our residents, and it:

• Builds a visually rich environment
• Encourages the growth of a culturally informed public
• Plays a role in attracting creative businesses and workers to our city
• Provides arts opportunities that are freely accessible to all’

About Lethbridge Public Art

‘Whether a large-scale contemporary sculptural work, functional elements integrated into the public realm, temporary video or sound installation or other site-specific interventions, public art has the ability to capture the public’s imagination. It can evoke aspects of the social, natural, cultural, physical, political, economic or historical context of the site and its locale. Public art enhances the urban fabric of the community by creating beloved landmarks, reflecting the local heritage, conveying Lethbridge’s cultural image while helping to foster a community identity.’ (https://publicartlethbridge.ca/art/ ) 

For the City of Lethbridge Public Art Collection, see: https://publicartlethbridge.ca/art/. 

Recent public artworks here include a series of exterior murals by Edmonton mural artist, Jill Stanton, and an interior mural by emerging Lethbridge artist, Kennedy Chinn, commissioned for the Lethbridge Regional Park ‘n’ Ride Transit Terminal in the city’s downtown.

The commission was designed as a mentorship opportunity for artists who are ‘emerging, early-career or interested in growing their skill set to include mural arts,’ working with recognized muralist, Jill Stanton, invited in April 2025 by a public call to submit Expressions of Interest.’ (https://publicartlethbridge.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Mural-Mentorship-Opportunity-Call-for-Expressions-of-Interest.pdf )  

Stanton’s To and From (July 2025), the largest of a series of related murals at street level on the building’s exterior, is described on the website of the Lethbridge

Public Art Collection:

‘This vibrant mural depicts a group of people travelling together, appearing to emerge from the Lethbridge Regional Park ‘n’ Ride Transit Terminal. Their towering scale and exaggerated proportions give them a mountainous, almost mythical presence within the space. Carried in their arms and trailing behind on pillars, the Southern Alberta native wildflowers (Gaillardia, aster, blue harebell, scarlet globemallow and others) root the mural to its location in Lethbridge; the travellers’ destination, plans, and direction of travel is left ambiguous. As the viewer waits for a connection or passes through on a bus, they are invited to daydream their own narratives for the larger-than-life, smiling travellers and their fistfuls of flowers.’ (https://publicartlethbridge.ca/art/to-and-from/ ) 

Chinn says of her mural inside the building, Passing Spaces (December 2025):

‘As we stumble through our daily routines, we are tempted to pass the time during all the boring aspects of them. But our finite lives are made up of these moments. This mural urges the individual in a “transition” stage of their routine or life to slow down and recognize the beauty around them. I chose this design for the Lethbridge Bus Terminal mural as commutes are often considered a mundane part of routine, and the skill of appreciating the moment is becoming even more essential in our increasingly distracted society.’ (https://publicartlethbridge.ca/art/passing-spaces/) 

Chinn reflected on her work in the bus terminal in a recent article on the University of Lethbridge Faculty of Fine Arts website that featured the artist and her studies at the university, art and thoughts on public art: 

Creating Meaning Through Public Art

‘Kennedy’s artistic journey expanded into public art through a mural mentorship opportunity with the City of Lethbridge, where she created a mural within the City Centre transit hub, a bustling space for the community. Previously focused on painting detailed works on canvas, Kennedy says she embraced the challenge of working at a larger scale and in a public setting.’

‘Her mural, Passing Spaces, reflects on the overlooked moments of everyday life. Inspired by the idea of "liminal spaces," Kennedy designed a detailed hallway scene that mirrors the experience of moving through transitional environments. The piece encourages viewers to slow down and recognize the beauty within routine moments, especially in spaces often passed through without a second thought.’

"’Something unique about public art is how it embodies the space it’s in. While other forms of art can be displayed for the public, this is a work created for it,’ Kennedy says.’’

‘"I also had to make note of what perspective it will be viewed from — it’s within a locked but windowed room, so the design had to translate well obstructed. I landed on the idea of a highly detailed hallway to parallel the bus station, as hallways are seen as something to quickly 'pass through'."’

‘Creating art in a public setting brought new meaning to Kennedy's work. It removed traditional barriers between artist and audience, allowing community members to witness both the process and the final piece.’

‘‘’Public art is important — it makes art accessible, and it feels so much more personal. Artists, including myself, tend to be anti-social creatures due to the nature of the work; hiding away in a studio. Public art is created with people in mind. It gets rid of the barrier that gallery entrance fees or curation can have.’’’ (Faculty of Fine Arts, ‘Kennedy Chinn cultivates a passion for learning and story telling’ (June 15, 2026)  https://stories.ulethbridge.ca/kennedy-chinn-cultivates-a-passion-for-learning-and-storytelling/ ) (See entire article for images of Passing Spaces in progress on site.)

Consider the statements above, concerning Public Art in Lethbridge, which identify some of the leading ambitions of the Public Art Program and assert its impacts in the shared public realm, notably:

‘public art which is a vital part of our community’s culture. Public art creates a distinct and vibrant legacy for our residents, and it:

• Builds a visually rich environment
• Encourages the growth of a culturally informed public
• Plays a role in attracting creative businesses and workers to our city
• Provides arts opportunities that are freely accessible to all’ and: ‘… public art has the ability to capture the public’s imagination. It can evoke aspects of the social, natural, cultural, physical, political, economic or historical context of the site and its locale. Public art enhances the urban fabric of the community by creating beloved landmarks, reflecting the local heritage, conveying Lethbridge’s cultural image while helping to foster a community identity.’

Discuss Stanton’s To and From and Chinn’s Passing Spaces with reference to these aims and defining values of public art. 

Think about the potential of public art to inspire engagement with the urban environment.

Describe the visual narratives introduced by these works into the built environment of public outdoor and indoor spaces here. Stanton, in her presentation, spoke of creating ‘graphic narratives’ in her art, in wall paintings (recall DOUBT in the 2016 exhibition, Blue Line, at the SAAG). The artist drew attention to connections to place and to community.

In her Art NOW talk, Stanton noted that all her commercial work – comics, posters – informs her public art.

‘Her work is rooted in site-responsive, narrative-driven approaches that reflect the character of the communities and built environments in which they exist…. Influenced by comics and graphic novels, Jill’s work draws on visual storytelling and graphic forms to create accessible, engaging imagery.’

With reference to Backstories for Nextfest / Varscona Theatre in Edmonton (2018), she spoke of her murals identifying with the places they are located; grounded in place and community, ‘very site-specific.’ Talking to the people that will intersect with the murals every day, at work or while commuting, is an important part of her practice, she said, as she seeks to balance her artistic voice with the community.

Consider representation of community and place in the works at the Lethbridge Regional Park ‘n’ Ride Terminal. Further, suggest the capacity of these public artworks to promote community engagement and identity.

You could comment here on acknowledged goals of the City’s Public Art Program to represent community, recognize diversity, promote identity, and create inclusive public spaces.

Note aspects of site-specificity. Observe how these works engage architecture and the surrounding built environment of the city, urban space. You might think of the building type here, a transit terminal, its functions and its users. Consider, too, the broader context of downtown Lethbridge: who occupies and passes through this urban space, the users of public space here. Suggest the experience of the viewer, how artworks are encountered and experienced on the street, from a passing vehicle, from the sidewalk or a bus entering the terminal, or inside the terminal.

Think about how these murals achieve their effects, in the context of place, site and architecture. In addressing this, approach not just the subjects of these paintings, but factors such as scale as well as relation to architecture. Describe how the murals engage the architecture and surrounding space, noting ways that the two-dimensional paintings are made continuous with the architecture.

In this context, you might also think about ‘liminal spaces’ (Chinn), transitional spaces and moments, the idea of passage, and time.

In surveying selected projects to date in her lecture, Stanton characterized her work as ‘very graphic and bold,’ intended to ‘make something joyful.’  She alluded to how her murals align with physical space and drew attention to how murals are encountered: close up or from a distance, from a moving vehicle, from the sidewalk, through a window. In To and From, she stated, travellers emerge from the station with fistfuls of flowers; viewers see the single flowers on the ‘pillars’ either before or after seeing the travellers, perhaps hinting what is to come around the corner.

You might think about how movement and encounter with the series of murals in locations on the west and south of the building introduces time into the work here. 
Images from the natural world, flowers, stylized and abstracted, are bought together with figurative imagery, figures in procession carrying cut flowers (Stanton); representation of constructed interior space, with light falling from windows, silhouetting plants, forming flat decorative patterns against the depicted light - the painted image itself seen through a window of an interior wall in the terminal (Chinn).

Natural elements, plant life introduced into built space. The two-dimensionality of Stanton’s abstracted images, with their simplified forms; boldly outlined, flat, solid-colour or patterned overlapping shapes, asserts the flatness of the wall. At the same time, the imposing, larger-than-life scale, with the three figures rising from sidewalk/road level and thus sharing the space of the viewer, create a striking visual presence. 

The bright vivid colour of figures and flowers, heading out towards the sunlit sidewalk, rising the full height of the west entrance for busses, contrasts the dark, tunnel-like space behind. Single blooms, isolated on concrete piers along the building’s south side similarly stand in the space of waiting pedestrians and passersby.

Conceived by the artist as a ‘hallway,’ Chinn’s work corresponds to the scale of the building’s interior space, occupying the expanse of the wall of the room it occupies in the terminal. Combining flat silhouettes, cast light and shadow in illusionistic space, the image appears continuous with this enclosed interior space.

In suggesting light cast through the actual window in the interior wall, the mural extends to the larger space of the terminal, occupied by the waiting viewer. Significantly, and perhaps seemingly contrary to art in the public realm, space containing Chinn’s Passing Spaces cannot be physically accessed by the viewer, and the location of the work entails very specific viewing conditions.