Saskatoon defends $297,000 plastic rock art project

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Celene Anger, the city's community services general manager, defended the art installation, saying that public art is part of building a vibrant and welcoming city as it contributes to quality of life, community identity, and economic attractiveness, alongside essential services.

Right and a rock that's made out of Plastic is supposed to represent that.

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u/eddiewachowski 1d ago

The funny thing is that since they had a budget of almost $300000, I'm certain they could have sourced real rocks.

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u/brickmaster32000 1d ago

The article covers that. That was one of the points of contention, they actually found the cost of sourcing actual rocks and it was a fraction of the price.

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u/samuswashere 1d ago

You can also buy giant plastic rocks that are used as playground equipment for much cheaper. I’d bet you could even find some that are made from recycled plastic.

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u/Mr_Baronheim 1d ago

Article says 17K - 50K per rock.

Saskatoon art commission: "but they're soooo heavy."

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u/UsernameStolenbyyou 19h ago

This totally reminds me of when Hartford, CT (my hometown) spent 87K on an "art installation" downtown. That was in 1977, so it would be about 450k.

The "art" was a bunch of boulders, set in rows within a triangle. People lost their shit over the cost and seeming stupidity, imho rightfully so.

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u/2peg2city 1d ago

The article states it would have been far cheaper to buy rocks from local businesses

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u/Traveling_Solo 1d ago

I feel like they could have gone to any place with trash, taken any plastic they found, recycled it, made the art with that and still have had money left... Not like there's islands of plastic in the oceans or anything >.>

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u/Kile147 1d ago

My initial assumption from the headline was that this project was an attempt at recycling. Like maybe a cleanup effort produced a lot of junk plastic and instead of putting it in a landfill they turn it into an art installation to show off what they achieved kind of thing. If this is literally just a commissioned piece that used new plastic, wtf.

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u/huskiesofinternets 1d ago

God Damn scam. 300,000..... They just hot pressed plastic scrap into sheets then glued it randomly together. Show me the plan that lays out these angles and I'll admit 8ts not random result from an unskilled fabricator who wants to call themselves an artist.

There's no meaning unless the meaning is to be pissed that we were stolen from

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u/unematti 13h ago

I mean, it's art. The goal wasn't practicality. And if you say plastic rocks aren't worth that much, same is true about dried paint on canvas, yet paintings go for a lot

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u/Epixltv 4h ago

Hey, so sorry I do it like that, could you shoot me a dm? its about progesterone (old comment of yours)

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u/Any-Fig3591 1d ago

It’s a plastic fucking rock, how is it almost 300,000. Seems like someone got their buddy paid

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u/Mr_Baronheim 1d ago

It's not as bad as it seems. It's not like it was $300K plastic rock. It was three plastic rocks, so "only" around $100K per.

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u/SipexF 1d ago

Absolutely total corruption here, even if an artist did build this rock with talent we didn't need to pay 300k for it. We could've bought and moved an actual boulder for less

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u/trainbrain27 1d ago

A lot of art, especially public art, is some form of graft.

We have some nice murals that didn't bankrupt the town, so it's not 100%

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u/onlyacynicalman 1d ago

300k won't bankrupt the town either, but it does feel like a rip off

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u/BobbyDukeArts 1d ago

To be fair, it's for 3 plastic rocks. Still ridiculous

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u/SeicoBass 1d ago

Tallest mountain in all of Saskatchewan, and it’s made of fucking plastic.

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u/CrashSlow 1d ago

Well actually the tallest mountain in Saskatchewan is made of Garbage. So you are technically correct, the best kind of correct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstrap_Provincial_Park

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u/internetlad 1d ago

We live in a society

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u/aledba 1d ago

Enough with plastic already

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u/Moonhunter7 1d ago

It will disappear, breaking down into microplastics and leaching into the environment.

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u/onlyacynicalman 1d ago

It'll wind up in your balls

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u/Newtiresaretheworst 1d ago

I can feel it in my nuggets!

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u/aledba 1d ago

I guess that means it goes to our ovaries too. Yikes

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u/onlyacynicalman 1d ago

Actually yes, and placental tissue, and the fetus too

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u/a11_hail_seitan 1d ago

It was already going to do that as it was waste. The horribleness of plastic is part of the point of the art. The cost is silly, but that's governments for you.

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u/aledba 1d ago

I wonder how full of plastic I actually am...like I wonder how many of all of my pounds are actually not me.

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u/jesterOC 1d ago

They were made of recycled plastic that was the whole point. Make it art instead of being in a landfill.

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u/FatCockFutaGirls 1d ago

But $300’000 for… a recycled plastic rock?

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u/jesterOC 1d ago

I’m not defending the costs. But that was the point. I don’t understand what the hell cost so much. Was it grading the land, processing the plastic, the actual sculpting of the rock? Or just a huge profit for the artist. Feels like a $50k job but I’m not in that line of work.

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u/FatCockFutaGirls 1d ago

Well fair enough

I didn’t think you were defending the costs I just like everyone else find it goofy that it cost that much for what is supposed to be recycling

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u/lock11111 1d ago

Probably nepotism some gov official had a family member or friend that needed money so they hire and pay the bill for a hunk of fake rock and boom friend gets paid wheels greased.

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u/pulseout 1d ago

It's not even a particularly good looking rock

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u/Dirt290 1d ago

Still advocating recycling as a cure all is the real joke.

The recyclable plastic that does make it to the factory requires cleaning and grinding which exposes much more microplastics into the environment for items that are tainted and ultimately nonrecyclable themselves.

Ever wonder what your rubber spatula is made of... recycled electronics.

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u/aledba 1d ago

Yeah. I must not be embracing microplastics hard enough

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u/Seinfeel 1d ago

This is just brain dead uncreative trash. Any semblance of commentary is just an excuse.

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u/capinredbeard22 1d ago

I’m not opposed to using public money for art installations per se. But presumably there was a selection process. What art projects lost out to this one? Was there an art project to make dirt out of plastic that didn’t make the cut??

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u/biosc1 1d ago

The only way that this makes sense is if it is a grift. I can't imagine this was selected throughout a process unless money was changing hands behind the scenes.

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u/CMG30 1d ago

I would have to look at the actual intention behind this installation, but one of the purposes of art is to get people talking and thinking. In this case about plastic waste and recycling.

It's certainly done that.

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u/Zarphos 1d ago

CTF is a group of grifters, but hey broken clocks and all. I don't have any issue with funding public art even for the amounts that the other examples in the article come in at. But this one costing 300k is a little much, and I'd like to see why this cost so much. If it's because of the recycled materials fine, but couldn't they have created something beautiful, instead of a fascimilie?

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u/Imaginary_Dingo_ 1d ago

Fake plastic trees would a great addition.

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u/HibiscusGrower 1d ago

This kind of bullshit is why people don't take public art seriously and see it as a waste of money. Put up public art that the public actually want to see, not conceptual trash that means nothing to the public.

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u/cwsjr2323 1d ago

Maybe the plastic rock will last longer?

/s

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u/sstelmaschuk 1d ago

“Modern Erratics reflects the purpose of the Material Recovery Centre by emphasizing waste reduction and reuse, Anger pointed out. The project transforms discarded materials into designed public artworks, extending the lifecycle of those materials and highlighting environmental stewardship.”

So it’s a plastic rock, outside of the centre that is used to help divert materials (including plastics) from landfills.

I get the sort of messaging here - creating something natural out of recycled plastics - and am mostly ok with the price tag. Even if the cost of materials was only half of the project, one does have to consider labour, design, and all the work the artists did before, during, and after.

We can debate whether that price is acceptable with tax dollars, sure - but I think we also have to come from a place of acknowledging that artists should be compensated for their work fairly (which includes more than just the final project.)

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u/pewsquare 1d ago

I am sorry, I agree that artists should be compensated, but this? No. Artists tend to be compensated for the effort they had to put in to learn their skills, this is not it. This is someone making off like a bandit with taxpayer money.

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u/goronmask 1d ago

Anti intellectual and anti art sentiment is a very bad sign but please don’t insult people’s intelligence. The project doesn’t seem to do anything for the community or the ecological crisis, just a hyper expensive way to reuse polluting materials.

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u/MyNameIsLessDumb 22h ago

I encourage you all to look up the Talus Dome in Edmonton, as well as a the story of a person getting stuck inside.

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u/stevatronic 1d ago

I kept reading and looking for some kind of explanation, like the rocks glow or interact with their environment or something

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u/huskiesofinternets 1d ago

How did they spend so much money on it and the fact it took so long is an absolute travesty. A real fabricator wouldn't have taken a year. But why not take a year. This is clearly a scam. And if it's not a scam this artists is basically our Ray Gun

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u/Upbeat_Parking_7794 1d ago

Public art should make the surroundings beautiful. In this case, clearly, it didnt.

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u/NorthernFrosty 1d ago

Public art should make the surroundings beautiful

Well... Art is more than just pretty. Art, good art, also makes you think. And while there's upset at the price tag, I do get the point of making a natural feature (a rock) out of recycled garbage that sits in front of a landfill.

I don't get the feeling the dispute is about the art, it's about the cost.

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u/trainbrain27 1d ago

Canada is well known for their (natural) rocks and trees and trees and rocks.

and waterrrrr.

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u/Corndogginit 1d ago

I like that boulder; that is a nice boulder.

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u/bookslayer 1d ago

Hey, the person/team that built that paid a fair bribe to the city council so they could get their ass absolutely garnished in return.

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u/Clevername582 1d ago

Yay, finally something to rival Calgary's hula hoop

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u/shiftyeyedhonestguy 1d ago

This is another example.of waste and corruption but...

Any anger about this should not be immediately vented here. Write to your local representative and blast them for this ridiculous waste.

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u/_friendlyfoe_ 1d ago

Anthropological rock

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u/samuswashere 1d ago

C’est ne pas un rock

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u/JustApricot798 21h ago

I'm not saying that this money went to an artist friend of someone who made that decision but that is what happened.

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u/kalgary 21h ago

They pull crap like this and then wonder why people get upset about their taxes being spent on art.

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u/Mattrockj 14h ago

Reminds me of Calgary's "Blue O"

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u/OrdinaryRest3409 3h ago

500$ max

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u/neroselene 1d ago

The defense seems a little rocky.

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u/wise_young_man 1d ago

> CTF said the art was paid for through a city policy that dedicates up to one per cent of a city project’s budget to public art, adding that the city hiked its property taxes by 6.7 per cent this year. The money spent on the three large plastic rocks is equivalent to property tax bills of about 118 households, said the CTF.

Shocker! Government waste fraud and abuse.

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u/brickmaster32000 1d ago

I am pretty sure that the company I work at has individually embezzled more money than that and it is just one of many in the city. The idea that fraud is the domain of government is hilarious.

Saskatoon defends $297,000 plastic rock art project

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