.086 Hilltoppers
Delbrook Park Public Art
In a photograph taken shortly after the 1977 fire, a group of Delbrook students sit on bleachers, cheering for their school basketball team, the Hilltoppers. Behind them, a banner reads: BURNED BUT STILL BEST! It is a message of youthful optimism, a soundbite imbued with the daze and bewilderment of adolescence, and a provocation of collectivity. Passing notes between desks, eating lunch on hallway floors, wearing gym uniforms, attending sports games and pep rallies. Seemingly trivial moments, passed by routinely, become unforgettably redolent in retrospect.
In conceiving the artwork, we look to celebrate the spirit of youth demonstrated by those Delbrook students of 1977, and their message that transcends that moment in history into our collective identity. As past memories and relationships constantly weave together to form the fabric of Delbrook Lands, the artwork reflects the character of the
site as a space of community, and projects to the future of the park as a continued place of gathering and new beginnings.
The proposed public art is an ode to those adolescent years of wonder. Abstract figures, referencing the style of the 70s, are scribbled out of powder-coated aluminum. They are placed on the south face of the washroom building, as if perching on the hilltop, surveying the distant horizon. Are they freshmen prospecting their futures? Perhaps graduates reminiscing their bygone days?
Prominently sited, these quaintly familiar characters and their trivial gestures of comradery bring to life the inconspicuous nuances of the everyday. They evoke in us a sense of audacity and nostalgia, hopeful and bittersweet all the same. Reflecting on the 1977 fire and the ensuing changes of Delbrook Lands, the artwork contemplates what memories are carried forward as the site is once again to begin anew.