This art is strictly for the sewers

DEIRDRE KELLY
globeandmail.com

Art isn't just in the eye of the beholder. In Toronto, it may soon be underfoot.

Following such cities as Vancouver, Tokyo and Kyoto, which have decorated manhole covers on their streets, the city is inviting citizens to submit design ideas for Grounds for Art, a project to bring public art to the new streets of Regent Park.

Rebecca Ward of the city's culture division, who is overseeing Grounds for Art, said this week that, as of earlier this week, the city had received 91 submissions for the competition, which ends Monday. The object is to find three winning designs, one each for storm, water and sanitary sewer designations. The winners will each receive a cash prize of $1,800 from the city.

Proposals so far run the gamut from more literal ideas about the weather to more abstract images, some including text, inspired by the roundness of the cover itself.

The shape of the covers, which measure 624 millimetres in diameter, seems to be the only restriction. That, and the city's request that the images be in black and white, to complement the standard iron colour of the manhole covers.

While sewer art isn't unique to Toronto, what makes the city's project stand out is that the designs are for new covers and not pre-existing ones as has been the case in other urban centres. "These are new streets going into Regent Park," Ms. Ward says. "It's part of how public art is involving artists in infrastructure projects to build creativity into every aspect of city building."

That about has it covered.