Behind the scenes of a Kamloops parkade's transformation into art

A mosaic made of 80,000 aluminum tabs, in 20 different colours, in three different sizes is being used to turn a Kamloops parkade into the city's largest piece of public art. 

Last year, the city announced the $166,000 project as part of a $1.4 million plan to revitalize the Lansdowne Street area, which includes adding curb extensions, improved street lighting, sidewalk improvements and landscaping to make it more pedestrian friendly.

Local artist Bill Frymire has been busy working with his team putting a stainless steel chain link-style mesh frame up around the parkade and attaching aluminum tabs to it.

"We've got 60 different variations [of tabs], actually 61 if you include the kinetic tiles, which you can see they're sort of blowing in the wind," said Frymire.

The tiles are meant to resemble shimmering water.

"There's a band [of tabs] that represent the confluence of the Thompson rivers that sort of wraps around the whole thing," Frymire explained to Daybreak Kamloops' Doug Herbert.  "And those ones are kind of metallic blue. So they'll catch the light and they'll move in the wind. You can sometimes hear them a little bit when it gets windy ... it's not too noisy."

Community Confluence

Frymire plans to name the artwork Community Confluence.

"You can kind of see the diamond shapes, which actually follow the motif of the diamond squares that we're filling in, and those represent community groups. They're all different colours and they all kind of blend together," said Frymire.

"So it kind of represents Kamloops with the backdrop of the river coming through and you can think of each tile as an individual of Kamloops."

August finish line

The project is no easy task. The parkade is 30 metres tall and requires two different booms to allow Frymire and his team to access every angle of the structure. 

Half of the team of six people works from the inside, while the rest are on the outside.

"We hope to ramp it up when weather gets a little warm. It's been getting warmer. So we're starting earlier and earlier. I can foresee maybe having 12 people working at once," said Frymire.

He hopes the project will be finished before August when it gets really hot and there is a risk of having to work outside during wildfire season.

"So, we're trying to get a jump on it right now, go hard and get most of it done."

Community response

While the project is still mid-production, Frymire is already receiving feedback. 

"A lot of people are like, 'Oh it's great.' You know, 'Looks good, it's going to be fantastic,'" said Frymire.

Meanwhile, he said at least one person was more skeptical, and asked him why he was hanging up "those metal things."

"It's a subjective thing, like any artwork is. So, some people are going to like it, I hope most people like it, and some people may not like it."