The same day Beyond Vague Terrain: The City and the Serial Image closed at the Surrey Art Gallery, Artswest had an exhibition in the new Surrey Library. Artswest is an amateur artists' group. If you think of grandmas with paint boxes you'll get a sense of the type of art here. I'm sure you could find something to match the couch. The new Surrey Library is part of the development of a city core for B.C.'s second-largest city. Anchored at one end with the Central City tower, straddling the Surrey Central Skytrain station, and reaching north to encompass a recreation centre, the new library, a new city hall (now just a hole in the ground), a spectacular hotel/convention/living tower in the offing, and there is even more potential the further north you go. The Surrey Art Gallery, in contrast, is 12 blocks due south along the King George Highway, a major north/south artery. That's a mile-and-a-half. Here's a bit of trivia: there are eight Surrey blocks in a mile, 12 in a Vancouver (or city) mile. If you're not driving you'll need to catch the number 325 bus, grab a cab or walk along the highway. And somehow this geography and coincidence of exhibitions seems to sum up both the concepts that inform the pieces in Vague Terrain, and the peculiar nature of a public art gallery in this not-quite-urban setting.

Here's art with no vision, goals, and of a doubtful legacy. I stole those headings from the Necklace Project website (www.necklaceproject.ca/). Lightmodal is the Surrey contribution. As I write this (December, 2011) there isn't yet a gallery page for this part of the project, which is "an inter-municipal collaboration for public art." Each contribution is supposed to reveal an "inner light of each community." So far, there's little information available about Lightmodal. The designers are Organelle Design. Unfortunately, they only have photos on their site. No explanation. It was unveiled September 30, 2011, as part of Culture Days. Information is limited: Lightmodal is a zero energy, environment responsive public artwork. Inspired by naturally occurring light phenomena like auroras in the sky and bioluminescence in the water, the artwork’s light patterns are generated in reaction to the surrounding motion, vibration, and sound of pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Viewers were bussed in.

I walked by the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre in Surrey on Friday, December 2 at 5:50 pm. It was still early, but in winter, when the sun sets at around 4pm or 4:30pm it seemed like 8pm. At least it wasn't snowing. And that's what it said on the side of the rec centre. "At least it's not snow." The whole wall had single words and news headlines splashed in projected light all over it. It was opening night. There was a fold-out table, covered in blue cloth. Hot chocolate sat in a snug dispenser. Insulated. A tray of chocolate cookies. And literature. Four neat piles of papers and brochures. I stared at the wall, reading headlines. I glanced at the table. A woman in red saw the opportunity. "Are you here for the opening?" she asked. I confessed I was there by accident, but politely asked what was going on. This is Surrey Urban Screen, part of an "outreach program of the Surrey Art Gallery." [city site source] It's been active since the Olympics, over a year and a half ago. You can see it on the left-hand side from the Skytrain as you head from Gateway to Surrey Central. For those of you in Vancouver, that's on the other side of the bridge.

[caption id="attachment_4545" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Just half a mile from downtown Surrey: a completed part of the Quibble Creek greenway meanders to 100 Avenue."][/caption]   Greenways are still rather new in city planning. The term was coined in 1995, and the idea of planning urban pathways that don't pander to the automobile still seems fresh.  The City of Surrey has been developing a network of greenways. With this in mind, the city has an advantage over other municipalities insofar that there are several undeveloped ...

[caption id="attachment_3603" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Central Parkway in Whalley connects buses with the skytrain."][/caption] "This is my favourite street in Surrey," my wife said as we turned onto Central Parkway, the street the Surrey Central Skytrain station is on. I nearly laughed out loud. We've only been living in Surrey for a few months. I grew up close to here, although I haven't lived here for over 20 years. My internal map of this street is informed by all those memories (lo these many years) of a rather sketchy bus loop. Not to mention all the bad press, especially in the 1980s of Whalley gangs who'd harass innocent bus passengers (never mind they were really high school kids looking for a handout). But my wife is a migrant to the coast from Montreal. To her this is all new. And so is this street, really a stub of 135 Street, now called Central Parkway. The new Surrey Central library is half-a-block away, next to the recreation centre and there's a gaping hole just in front where the new city hall will be planted. SFU Surrey is at one end, with it's own wide plaza. And at the other end? Well, maybe that will get a coat of paint soon too. Why would this short boulevard be her favourite street? Here's why: