By Kathleen Black
Bellwether is a sculptural installation by local artists Erin Robertson and Anna Williams installed in early April at the new Longfields OC Transpo station. The playful arrangement of border collie herding sheep through the station offers transit riders a whimsical visual to ponder during an otherwise routine commute. The work was commissioned by the City of Ottawa as part of the policy of “1% for public art” (1% of the cost of projects over $1M is put towards public art). Robertson and Williams proposed the piece in May 2010 and have been developing it over the last 11 months. All located on the transit station’s green roof, each piece is roughly 250 pounds of bronze with patina finish. Amidst an array of meanings and metaphors, this installation gives us a glimpse of our own role within a flock. For more on the installation, we spoke to the artists.
How did the two of you meet and then come together to create Bellwether?
Anna Williams: Erin taught me at the Ottawa School of Art when I was a teenager and then I went away to university and she ended up being represented by the same gallery when I got back. So we got reacquainted and she was really excited about the fact that I was doing bronze and wanted to learn more about the process. And then the project came up so she asked me if I wanted to collaborate on it.
Erin Robertson: And then the piece evolved from the proposal stage. We ended up getting short listed and we developed the piece and collaborated on the ideas. Through the process, we basically passed the ideas back and forth. I think we both have a similar sensibility in what we’re after so it was a very successful collaboration. We worked really well together.
Erin, you have quite a few paintings that feature sheep. Would you say this installation brings your paintings to life in a sense?
ER: I do have a real attraction to the animals for various reasons: the vulnerability quality, the grouping, and yet there’s something defiant. There’s so many different compositions and ways of working with different herding animals. I’ve used the sheep a lot.
This particular work [Bellwether] is eerily like a series of paintings that I had done a few years ago, called “Signs of Life.” In that body of work there were hydro towers, sheep painted in the landscapes, and airplanes—and the Longfields setting is like those paintings. So it’s like a three dimensional image of that work. That’s sort of a serendipitous outcome.
Anna, you had all the previous experience working with bronze. Is it you that did most of the physical work or did you both?
AW: Erin dove right in, right from when I showed her the sheet of wax and said let’s make something to show the jury and she just took to it like a house on fire. I mean all her experience working with ceramics, the transition from clay to wax is a really fluid one, and so she just launched into it, and was right there every step of the way. 
How does it feel to have your work outside in a public space as opposed to in a gallery or someone’s house?
AW: It definitely makes you more vulnerable. I mean the work itself is more vulnerable, to vandalism and to all these different things. And it’s open to a much wider breadth of viewers and criticism. But at the same time it’s also open to so many more people, and the reaction has been so positive, that it really does the most basic thing of just personalizing an industrial space, and bringing some level of human connection to what can be a pretty mundane experience of waking up, having breakfast, putting on your suit and getting on the bus.
What do you hope this installation will make people think or feel when they see it?
ER: When we were working on it a lot of different thoughts came in and out of it. Part of it is the relationship to being in a group. We see these animals as social metaphors and the way they’re placed is like they’re being herded through the transit station. There’s the dog that’s herding the two smaller little lambs, one is thumping and one is running. They’re being herded towards the bellwether. The bellwether is the leading sheep—typically a male neutered sheep. It wears a bell around its neck so that it can be heard so you can find the flock of sheep when there’s fog or you can‘t see them. So the bellwether is on one green roof and the dog herding the two sheep on another green roof and then on the platform is the black sheep and it looks across at the bellwether.
Is there any message from the piece that you personally associate with, Anna?
AW: I think for myself the main message is that we each have our role within a community and within the flock. Whether it’s the border collie pushing the trend, or the two lambs running with the herd, the bellwether leading the way, or the black sheep turning away, each of us has these roles, and neither can operate without the other.
The piece could have been named after the black sheep, or the border collie, but it’s named after the bellwether, why is that?
AW: Because we wanted to have really underlying the point that we are experiencing a peak; we’re in this moment of potential for great change. The bellwether is the term for the precursor of the new trend. And hopefully it’s a more hopeful trend and a more grounded trend. So naming it after the bellwether was coming out of a place of hope and out of hope for something new.
