I’m in the unique position of being able to do both a workplace and a public transit rant at the same time, although not necessarily about the usual subject. Well, here goes…
The fourth and final (and most beautiful) one of Claude Guité’s beautiful season murals at Snowdon metro station has finally been vandalized. What the fuck is wrong with you, STM conservation people? Wake up! You could have stopped this before it even started. What kind of mentality does it take to leave a big beautiful mural just open and unprotected like that after two murals at the same station have already been irreparably damaged by both graffiti and the bonebrained attempts to get it off?
Go to the fucking Home Depot and buy some plexiglass, for Bienvenüe’s sake! Put it on that fucker and protect it once and for all! What’s the point of putting art in the metro if you’re just going to let it get destroyed? Take some pride in your system!
I’ve been trying, in the short time I’ve been working at the STM, to push this. Everyone I talk to outside the department tells me the same thing: it’s awful, but the physical plant people don’t give a shit about the artworks. EXCUSE ME, THE ARTWORKS ARE PART OF THE METRO BUILDINGS. If you’re not protecting them, you are NOT DOING YOUR GODDAMN JOB. When the choice is between what would be less than a WEEK’S WORK and ONE ONE-THOUSANDTH OF THE BUDGET SURPLUS, and having a huge, beautiful mural DESTROYED, what kind of brain-injured GIBBON couldn’t figure that fucker out!
If Jean-Paul Mousseau is dead, he’s turning in his grave. TWITS!
You can’t really protect a mural with plex. For one thing sheets of plex - standard, non-custom - are only 4’ x 8’. You have to deal with fitting them together without extra-visible seams. (Try milling a straight tongue & groove joint along the edges of 2 sheets of 1/8" plex. It’s hard.) Then you have to figure out how to attach the plex to the wall without damaging the mural. Then you have to deal with the glare factor off the plex which will “bleach out” the mural when seen from this or that angle. If there are lights near the mural they will also be mirrored on the mural.
Plex is really, really easy to scratch, too. Anyone could come along with a key and write their name on it, and then you’re left with some idiot’s name in permanent white scratches all over your plex. Oh and if one of those physical plant guys comes along with an ammonia-based glass cleaner, he will etch the plex into a foggy, rough, opaque surface.
Rather than plex I recommend a clear coat of polyurethane varnish, graffitti-resistant and basically invisible.
That really sucks, matt. I’ve been following the whole saga on your message board. I’m frequently at Snowdon, as that’s where Uncle Sergei drops me off when he gives me a lift from work.
You may recall my telling you that when I first moved to Montreal 10 years ago, I’d amuse myself by riding the metro for no reason, from one end to the other of each line (except the blue line). The first time I passed through Snowdon, I was absolutely taken with the murals.
I think the poly varnish is a good idea. Would it make the murals shiny, though? Is that what they use on the NYC subway trains? In the 70s they used to be heavily graffitied (graffitoed?) but now they’re pristine, or at least not the way they were (think: opening sequence to “Welcome Back Kotter”). It’s been a few years since I rode the NYC subway, so I don’t remember, and at the time, I wasn’t really paying attention to the trains.
Still, this sucks. And given two murals have been vandalized within, what, a week, methinks it’s the same fucktard culprit. :mad:
You can run at the speed of light, but you’ll never catch him.
I think so. (Though an experiment with a small inconspicuous patch or on a sample of the same material is definitely called for first). The stuff is available with a water base and with a matte finish.
Kick-ass cool, matt. I love the site, it’s the best since I never bother keeping paper schedules around.
Here’s a question for you. Do they really have a special committee to come up with uglier and uglier bus passes each month? I think they need at least 4 people on the job to imagine a way to make them sucessively uglier. It’s really been quite an accomplishment, I think.
