The Words Don’t Fit The Picture | Vancouver, BC | February 2013

[twitter]I lived in Vancouver for more than 30 years, I’ve now lived away from the city for more than 3. That span of time is just enough to make the familiar nostalgic, and give me enough distance to, once again, appreciate the uniqueness of the city.

On a recent visit home, I spent a few hours wandering downtown staring at places, structures, and views that I once took for granted. The simple smell of the air was something to savour.

I remember when the Vancouver Public Library’s downtown location opened in 1995. It was a unique structure that stood out from the surroundings. Now that Yaletown has matured, the library is just another thread in the fabric of the city.

The sign on the southwest corner, The Words Don’t Fit In The Picture, is an art installation from Ron Terada. It is a large freestanding, three-dimensional sign with 1280 LED light nodes. The lights change with a computer programmed sequence.

“THE WORDS DON’T FIT THE PICTURE is a text-based work made in response to the context, building and public sur¬rounds of the Vancouver Public Library,” says Terada.

“The sign takes its cues from an era of signage when signs were once seen as celebratory, grand and iconic – in effect, as landmarks in their own right as a kind of symbolic architecture (think: Caesars Palace, The Flamingo, The Stardust – to the landmark of all landmarks, Hollywood). In tracing this lineage, the work also acknowledges a local history when Vancouver was once seen as one of the neon-light capitals of North America. Taken within the context of a public library, the work touches upon – in a very poetic way – the use of words and language as boundless and imaginative, as a catalyst for a multiplicity of meanings.”