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Where does a new work of art come from?

Is it outside the artist waiting to be found? Or is it in the artist waiting to be discovered?

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With Esther Shalev-Gerz, it was a little of both. When I asked her how she came up with The Shadow, she told a story about walking around the University of B.C. campus one day. Shalev-Gerz, who lives in Paris but spends her summers on Cortes Island in B.C., said she was thinking about the verticality of Jim Hart’s Reconciliation Pole at the south end of the campus and the flagpole at the north end by the Rose Garden.

She said the campus, being elevated slightly above sea level, made her think of the horizon and how the views of the ocean on Burrard Inlet accentuate the horizontality of the landscape.

“Suddenly, this shadow came for a visit,” she said in a phone interview from Paris.

“Some of my works just come and say: ‘Hey, I’m here. You have to realize me.’ I was so surprised.”