Tuesday 21 May 2013

On David Gilhooly's "Frog"

I had in mind a wee exploration of where this piece of public art is and what it's doing and why aren't we told who made it and what it's called. I took photos.
 
I spent half an hour there and another half in the coffee shop over a breakfast tea sending the photos one by one from my phone to my computer.
I thought it had been installed in 1972 or so during the height of the pop/folk/funk ceramics period at U of R with Gilhooly and Yurisity and Fafard and others. The frog looks a tad crude up close, and in need of repair. (If this is a frog, I thought at one point, that aged, washed-up leftie--hanging on to face only one or two batters per outing, once or twice a week--is a viable  relief pitcher for the Jays.) But while everyone else is just on the way to work, the frog's been here 40 years.
And that was the idea (including the word frogment). I pedalled out to the campus to flesh it out and, not incidentally, to get on the U's case for lack of plaquage for the frog.
Turns out that Fafard himself had the thing built. Story here.
 
 
 




2 comments:

Brenda Schmidt said...

I know it goes without saying, but hey, the story of that plaqueless frog has legs!

Gerald Hill said...

Not yet, but your comment's a start. Thanks.