Daydream (2025)
Artist: Rebecca Bayer

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Location: Bennett Street, Burnaby British, Columbia

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Material: Steel, Fiberglass LED Lighting, Glass, Automotive Finishes

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The artwork of uncanny realism and oversized scale, designed to spark playful discovery and nurture a respectful bond between the local community and native plant species. At its heart, this piece invites awe and reverence for a wildflower that has flourished in this region for millennia — the Western Red Columbine — a species that today serves as an outstanding pollinator plant, quietly supporting the local ecosystem.

DAYDREAM imagines a more connected world, where human attention aligns with ecological presence. With their glowing, internally lit stamens, the sculptures offer a luminous welcome to locals and visitors alike, inviting them to reflect on the shared environment we all inhabit. By fostering empathy toward the nonhuman life that thrives here, the artwork highlights the soft, often overlooked threshold between the natural and built worlds. The dramatic shift in scale invites a recalibration of everyday reality. Residents and visitors of all ages may find themselves seeing their own habitat anew, where ecological understanding blends with the quiet poetics of daily life. Standing before
these wildflower sculptures, we are reminded of our own scale, our place in space, and the delicate interconnections we too often take for granted. French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, in The Poetics of Space (1958), explores how our emotional and sensory responses to architectural forms awaken the imagination. For me, his reflections illuminate how imagination and sensory experience
intertwine, connecting this world, the world-that-was, and the world-that-could-be.
 

“DAYDREAM transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that

bears the mark of infinity.” -Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

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Photography by: In house

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Project Details

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The flower forms are constructed of stainless steel, fibreglass,
glass and LED lighting. The fibreglass flower was sculpted in
every detail using a digital software and reference provided by
the artist. The digital sculpture was broken down into separate
parts and negative molds were 3D printed and prepared for
castings using engineered fibreglass. A number of parts were
then cast to complete two full flower shapes. During the
assembly process stainless steel framing and milled connection
plates were added to each flower and trumpet form to match
the stainless steel plates attached to each of the two stainless
steel/powder coated stems.

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