Curation for the museum’s next exhibit featuring Cominco folk art is well under way.
There is, arguably, no better example of art fabricated at Cominco than the Picasso replica, situated outside Selkirk College on Cedar Avenue facing Helena Street.
Read more: Last call for Trail's 'Picasso'
Read more: Reclaiming the Silver City Picasso
It’s arrival in Trail’s downtown landscape is an interesting story.
The sculpture is a replica of the Chicago Picasso, a piece commissioned by the architects of Chicago’s Civic Center (now known as the Daley Plaza).
It was unveiled there on Aug. 15, 1967, four years after Pablo Picasso was first approached to design something for the space.
At 50 feet tall, the unveiling drew thousands of spectators and plenty of provocation.
What was it supposed to represent?
Many a theory exists, giving credence to the role of abstract art in eliciting creativity and deeper thought in those who see it.
One such spectator was Joe Szajbely, a senior project engineer with Cominco who led the No. 9 Acid Plant project in the 1970s.
Szajbely was described as an exuberant leader, proud of the work his team was conducting to reduce harmful emissions in our community and beyond.
On a trip to Chicago, Szajbely was moved by the giant sculpture; so moved, in fact, that he used its likeness as a now-famously unilateral dedication to his project.
In what appears to be a covert initiative, certainly not sanctioned or even reviewed from above, the shops got to work to fabricate a scale model of the sculpture.
Szajbely hoped the piece would sit proudly in front of the new plant.
Once complete, however, Cominco brass were less than enthused.
Either annoyed by the resources expended to produce what former Cominco general manager, Marc Marcolin, called “an atrocity,” or the confusing proposed location for a work of modern art, Szajbely was ordered to remove it altogether.
Eventually, the City of Trail accepted the statue.
It was affixed along the Esplanade at Eldorado Street in late October 1977, certainly not where intended.
The city removed it 40 years later in 2007 for infrastructure upgrades.
Somewhere during that time, the once metal sculpture was painted blue, red, and yellow.
In October 2020, after a years-long appeal to see the sculpture restored and back on exhibit, the city re-installed it in Trail’s burgeoning arts district.
Missing to time is Szajbely’s rationale for choosing this specific sculpture.
What about the Chicago Picasso resonated with the No. 9 Acid Plant and Cominco for Szajbely?
Could one link the smelter operations, looming over a small mountain town, almost entirely out of place to the woman/Afghan hound/baboon/bird one sees in the sculpture?
Did the smelter evoke a similar reaction to folks seeing it for the first time?
Does the smelter mean something different, good and bad, to all who experience it?
Perhaps.
While the City of Chicago was exploring public art concepts at the time, Cominco was certainly not interested in a similar artistic discovery.
The ORBIT magazine of Oct. 16, 1975, published a photo of the trusty zinc plaque commemorating the opening of the plant and the nearly 800 people involved in the project.
While a most random piece of art for a community like Trail, the story that accompanies it is classic Cominco: We want it? We’ll make it.
And in a world and an industry where intellectual property, patents, and other proprietary rights are heavily protected, Szajbely was in luck!
Because the City of Chicago released plans, drawings, and even the sculpture itself without a single copyright notice, the US District Court ruled in 1970 the sculpture fell within the public domain.
Lucky us!
The museum welcomes any items made (officially or unofficially) at Cominco for its upcoming exhibit.
