2008: Public Sculpture, Details Part 2

Well, back to 2008 and my point and shoot camera. Today we are going to look at a set of sculpture that's around the Metropolitan Police Headquarters in Downtown Toronto on College street between Yonge and Bay st. These pieces are located at the main entrance on College, the corner of Bay and Grenville, and at the rear Grenville entrance. They are a combination of granite and bronze and try to embody the police service here in Toronto, or at least that's my take on it. The artist that created these pieces is Eldon Grant.

The first piece on College is of a female officer with a trowel with a foot on a stack of granite "bricks". The trowel is held out and has mortar on it. As if she's setting up the placement of another brick. It's a good sculpture with the officer in proper gear for a patrol officer. Of course it isn't what a normal officer wears these days.



On the corner of Bay and Grenville is the next one. It's of a young boy pulling a wagon which contains an obelisk style column. On each face of the column are the words "To Serve And Protect". Such a large task for a young lad, and such a weighty responsibility as well.




One thing I have seen is the defacing of some pieces with graffiti. It ticks me off when I see it. Some is easily cleaned off like on the granite shown in the last picture. I have also seen it scratched on bronze pieces and once it sets into the patina, forget about removing it cheaply. Any way rant off and the last piece.

At the Grenville entrance stands a man holding a board on his shoulders carrying a stack of books on each side. Now this could be two things. Either the rule of law, or knowledge. It could go either way. Todays modern police are rarely the knuckle dragging neanderthals that they are sometimes portrayed to be in certain medias. It takes a lot of education in just the law in order for them to do their job effectively.



Well that's it for today. Keep walking.

PaladinPhil