It has taken shape. The sculpture that Clare Scott-Taggart is creating along with sculptor Gordon Becker will soon be cast in bronze and assembled.
The two artists, who have been working alongside each other at Becker's studio in Roncesvalles Village, took a break on a sunny, but bitter cold March 1st morning to chat about the commissioned piece.
Scott-Taggart, who specializes in custom metalwork and owns a studio called Rusty Girl, won the commission to create a sculpture for a condo development by Shane B. Inc. called St. Gabriel Village in the city's east end.
It's being built on a piece of land that used to be owned by St. Gabriel Church. The church sold part of the land and kept about a quarter of it to build a new church. Not only has the church been recognized for its cutting edge architecture, said Scott-Taggart, but also for its environmentally sustainable building practices. The developer is following suite and building an environmentally friendly condo complex.
"That was part of the mandate for the art," Scott-Taggart said. "It will be at the main driveway and the congregation will drive by it. I wanted it to be symbolic to the church."
That's why she's calling the sculpture, of six bronze stylized seed pods, 'Seeds Across the Great Span of Time'. It not only symbolizes the environment, but the beginning of something new, Scott-Taggart explained.
"I don't have a lot of experience with large scale stuff," she said of why she enlisted the talents of Becker.
The two west-end artists have a connection through the film industry. It just so happens that Becker's illustrious career includes two decades sculpting for movies. It took Scott-Taggart four months to develop the sculpture's concept. She won the juried competition last September and the finished piece will be installed this September.
Scott-Taggart has nothing but praise for Becker.
Becker has been professionally sculpting since the mid-1970s, but really, he's been at it since he was a kid. It's all he's ever wanted to do, he said.
He was inspired by a film he saw at school when he was 11 years old. It was a film about an Inuit, who found a "big lump" of soapstone. Hauling it back to his teepee he proceeded to whack at it with a hatchet, rasps and files.
"I was hooked," Becker said. "I was delirious. I went home and told my parents I wanted to be a carver. That Christmas, I got a set of tools."
His road to a career as a sculptor was a winding one. He attended the Ontario College of Art and Design, but dropped out after a year. He travelled for a decade before apprenticing alongside a Hungarian wood carver in Europe.
There was a time when Becker said he was handcarving a large percentage of all the furniture in Ontario, "production line stuff," but that's how he learned to be very fast at his craft.
"Wood sculpting is a slow process. Pieces take a long time to complete. I wanted to be as fast as possible," he said.
When Scott-Taggart called, he was "incredibly interested," he said.
Scott-Taggart, a graduate of Sheridan College's School of Crafts and Design, fell in love with metal working after taking a welding class in her second year. She had a line of garden accessories called Rusty Girl for 10 years, which she sold wholesale across North America.
"I did a lot of arbors, gates, furniture," she said. "Then I started doing sculpture. I always wanted to make big, non-functional work."