February 21, 2018

Blasted Art
Victoria, British Columbia
2016

When blasting rock for a new building foundation in a densely packed urban area, some means of containing the blast’s shrapnel is necessary. In this case in downtown Victoria they used these large woven mats of recycled rubber (tires perhaps). They were quite effective. Watching them work from our fifth floor hotel window across the street, I never saw any stray material flying anywhere. Too bad they were not effective at all at containing the blast noise or the more constant machinery noise as the rubble was being cleared away. The unpleasantly noisy environment did yield this quite pleasing abstract composition–another case of suffering for my art I guess. 🙂