The City of Red Deer is looking for a ghost to haunt the outside of the new downtown Sorensen transit station and parking garage.
The city’s Culture Department intends to issue a call for ideas over the next week or two for a new Ghosts project bronze statue for the corner of 49th Street and 49th Avenue, next to the station.
The public artwork, like past Ghosts of town founder Rev. Gaetz, former mayor and newspaperman Frances Galbraith, or women’s farming advocate Hazel Braithwaite, is to be of a person or persons, said culture superintendent Kristina Oberg.
The statue could be of the station’s namesake, Gordon Sorensen, who started Red Deer’s first public transit service in 1957 after running a bus line around Central Alberta. But it doesn’t have to be, said Oberg.
She noted artists might come up with a different concept, such as people waiting at a bus stop, for example. Other Ghosts around town have included anonymous subjects, such as the firemen, horses and wagon in front of the former fire station, which is now part of the public library, or the unnamed railway worker and dog on Alexander Way.
It’s been about a decade since the last Ghosts statue was erected — of Mickey the Beaver and Doris Forbes in Coronation Park. Oberg isn’t sure why it’s been so long. The city only took over the Ghosts project from the downtown business association in 2008.
One reason could be rising foundry costs. The price of copper, which is used to create bronze, has gone up dramatically, said Oberg.
The city is not yet releasing the exact budget for this project because the final amount will vary, depending on whether up-front money needs to be spent to make scale models of various proposals. But the City of Red Deer generally budgets one per cent of a project’s cost on public art and the Sorensen Station cost $21.3 million.
Proposals for the statue will be judged by the city’s public art committee, which is made up of a professional artist, two to three members of the public, a member of city council, the public art co-ordinator and Oberg.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com