"Tricycle" Group Installs Public Sculpture in Sherwood Park

Department of Art and Design Contract Instructors Catherine Burgess, Royden Mills and Professor Emeritus Walter Jule, artists collectively known as Tricycle, recently completed a public art sculpture commission in Sherwood Park. Titled “Momentum”, the installation took place this summer in front of the new multi-purpose civic facility, Centre in the Park.

Landscaping was completed in late September for the pedestrian zone “Prairie Walk”, which links the Centre to Festival Place and Sherwood Park’s Heritage Trail System. At the west end of the Walk, “Momentum” consists of four stainless steel walls, almost 100 feet long, carved with lily pad shapes.  The dramatic play of light and shadow through the sculpture evokes the experience of swimming in a pond, rather than simply viewing it from above.

Royden Mills, who teaches sculpture at the University of Alberta as well as Grant MacEwan, has been exhibiting since the mid-1980s and was nominated for the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Award in 2005. He says of his work, “I believe that sculpture can provide a physical inspiration for the viewer that might inform the viewer about an actual instant of physical existence.” That philosophy is realized in “Momentum” by referencing a connection to the prairies through abstraction, rather than through literal illustration.

The structure will be accompanied year-round by a looping soundtrack that emphasizes the concept of nature. The two nature-themed soundtracks, both 30 minutes in length, are the product of another collaborator, locally-based Sonus Post Audio.

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