UN Pool
Strathcona Park
Ottawa, Ontario
Summer, 1994

This piece was part of a City of Ottawa program in which local artists were commissioned to paint wading pools. Having just completed the UN Decoration Series, military service ribbons were fresh in my mind. The coincidence of basic pool colour, lane markings and some UN Peace Keeping ribbons suggested that a pattern could be created that recalled both. My hope was that our leisure and the service of our military would be related.

Unfortunately, it looked a little too much like modern art and a few of the local residents sniffed it out. As they rightly discerned, someone was providing them art and they hadn't been consulted. Their perpetually blue pool was blue and white for a year and they were up in arms.

Rubber-based paint on concrete wading pool.