Peyachew sculpture selected for Yorkton

The past year was a good for Lionel Peyachew.

The artist from Red Pheasant First Nation had not one, but two major sculptures unveiled during 2005.

The first, The Four Directions, a 24-foot high piece featuring four bows created out of steel pipes and cables, was unveiled on the University of Regina campus in October. The second, Doorways to Opportunity, was unveiled in Yorkton in December.

Doorways to Opportunity, fabricated of weathered steel, takes the form of a scroll, with laser cut pictographs representing the past 100 years in the history of Yorkton. The piece, which stands eight feet high and spans 20 feet across, features four doorways, with each one facing to one of the four directions and representing doorways to Saskatchewan's four gateway communities-La Ronge to the north, Yorkton to the east, Estevan to the south and Lloydminster to the west.

Peyachew, who works as a professor of art at the First Nations University of Canada, said his concept for the artwork started out with the idea of having four doors featured in the piece. "And then I started incorporating the circle, the scroll, I guess, the scroll of time."

Peyachew said he drew inspiration for the piece from Spiral Getty, an earthwork by American artist Robert Smithson. Smithson created the piece, a large spiral made up of mud, rocks and precipitated salt crystals, in 1970 on the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

One of the unique features of Doorways to Opportunity is that people viewing the sculpture can walk through it, entering and exiting the doorways and wandering through the scroll.

"That was sort of what people were very interested in, in that concept," Peyachew said, "Because you can actually go into this art and experience being inside it. And at the same time, you can be able to absorb all the icons that are inside. And as you walk out, you can absorb other icons, various icons from the history of Yorkton, right to the present ... you can actually associate and actually go inside of the sculpture and be in the sculpture and be part of the sculpture."

Doorways to Opportunity is one of four scultures commissioned by the provincial government to commemorate Saskatchewan's centennial year. Selection of the design for the four pieces was done through a peer jury process administered by the Saskatchewan Arts Board.

Portage, a sculpture of two people portaging their canoe, has been installed in La Ronge. The piece by Chris St. Amand was created of steel and ferro-cement.

Sky Dance, by Douglas Bentham has been installed in Lloydminster. The sculpture features burnished steel shapes representing clouds, captured in a red-orange steel frame that forms a gateway between past, present and future.

Spinning Prairie, a sculpture by Jefferson Little, was chosen for the community of Estevan. A large windmill shaped from structural steel, the piece celebrates the area's agricultural and mining traditions while giving a nod to the role wind power may play in the future of the Energy City.

For more information about the four centennial artworks, visit the Saskatchewan Arts Board Web site at www.artsboard.sk.ca.