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Location: Town of Banff, Alberta, Canada
 

Material: Natural Kootenay Stone, Custom Stainless Steel Brackets, Glass Castings

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ask the water, elicits curiosity about our evolving relationships to the Rocky Mountain ecosystems connecting the park. It offers people in Banff an opportunity to reflect on their surroundings 
in relation to the cycle of water. The Bow River, and the valley through which it flows, were created by glaciers during the last Ice Age. The continued melt of the glacier at the headwaters of the Bow has allowed the river to flow without interruption for the last 10,000 years. 

 

The artwork references the glacial processes that have shaped the mountain landscape surrounding the Town of Banff and the cycles of life created by repeated glaciation. Impressions of the surface of the Athabasca Glacier were made by the artist in the summer of 2023 and cast in glass to capture the surface character of glacial ice on a microscale. The glass and Kootenay Stone sculpture brings rarely seen impressions of the Athabasca Glacier to Bear Street to visualize a moment in the glacier’s evolving geological lifespan. 

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Photography by: Chelsea Yang-Smith and Carvel Creative

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Project Details

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ask the water consists of 3 stacked Kootenay Stone boulders with 3 pin connections tying them together, and 7 glass castings supported by custom stainless steel brackets mounted to the boulders in various locations. 

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3 Large Kootenay Stone boulders were selected for their visual appeal, texture and surfacing which would allow them to be stacked in a visually pleasing composition. Each of the boulders were stacked one on top of the other (Dry Fit) until the final orientation was achieved. Templates were then developed to be used for the final assembly and to mark all hole locations including the foundation holes. The holes were then cored completely through the middle and bottom boulders

to accept three bars. The top boulder was cord from the bottom. 7 custom media blasted stainless steel brackets were made to accept the various sized glass casting molded from the surface of the Athabasca Glacier.

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