The Current - These Calgary artists want a piece of your mind

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Caitlind Brown and Wayne Garrett don't just create public art. They involve people in its creation and invite them to interact with it. That might mean picking up a colourful phone in an Edmonton park and talking to a stranger on the other side. Or peering through a spyglass into a glass globe to see a scene from a book that meant something to one of their neighbours.

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You can hear that now on cue with me, Tom Power, wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. There is a park in Edmonton where you can make a special kind of phone call, not on your cell phone, but on a brightly colored old school handset and cord phone that stands on a pedestal. That phone connects with a dozen others like it around the park. You pick it up, and a stranger on the other side might answer for a chat, or if nobody's available, you can leave a voice. You can leave a voicemail. This is an art installation. It's called Play It by Ear, and it is the brainchild of Caitlin Brown and Wayne Garrett. And that invitation to play has been answered by thousands of

park users. Take a listen to a few of the messages they have left on those phones. Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to the peteria. How may I help you? Hi. I don't know what you might be going through, but I just want to remind you that it will all be will at the end. If you're a new poet, I will carry my wish to you. Bring peace around the world, and don't let anyone ruin the year. If anyone hears this, I'll be dead in the future. Hello, I'm at the Purple Phone, and there's four buses here, and they're all idling.

We might not have a future if they all keep idling. It's a beautiful day. Anyhow, thanks for listening. Oh, hi. Hello. How does this end? Like, oh, my cousin's coming. That's how it ends, apparently.

Just some of the 5,000 messages left on phones that are part of an art installation in Edmonton's Butler Memorial Park. Caitlin and Wayne, the artists who created that project, are in our Calgary studio to talk about why they involve the community in their creative endeavors. Not just that phone installation, but also another one. that opened this past weekend at the new library in Erdry, Alberta.

Caitlin, Wayne, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. It sounds bonkers. Delightfully bonkers. I've seen video. I've looked at photos, read pieces about it, and now I've heard people on the phone. If I went to the park, Caitlin, what would I see?

Well, the park is pretty small, so it's kind of sandwiched between an old Alberta government telephones building and a new transit hub for a lot. for public city buses. And so probably the first things you'd see would be the things around the park. But as you wander into the park, there's a series of telephone pillars kind of placed in between benches. And they're all brightly colored and they're connected by what we call landlines, which are literally lines on the ground that connect different color-coded telephones. And so if you were curious enough and if you were interested in what these objects do,

you could pick up one of these phones and perhaps connect with a strange. or somewhere across the park. Wayne, why did you do this? Why? I mean, there are any number of ways that people could communicate across the park you could call on a cell phone. You could yell.

Why this? Yeah, we did this because we recognized that this park is, because it's right beside a transit hub, there's a lot of through fare type traffic and people coming and going and the opportunity for sort of misconnections and connecting different park users

of all different age groups. And so for us, this was kind of the idea of creating a play structure. but play for all ages, and part of it was thinking about older generations and how, you know, for a lot of seniors in our communities, play means picking up the phone and calling your friends and having a conversation. And so we wanted to kind of introduce a bright, colorful element like you'd find in a playground, but in a way that could promote intergenerational play. Do you think the young people know what to do? Do they know how to pick up the old school phone? Yeah, you know, it's funny.

We didn't know before we did this project if young people would really understand what they were. I mean, it was all part of the experiment of this, I suppose. But when we did some test pop-ups before doing the actual installation, we brought some kind of mock-ups of telephones. And right away, kids were excited to play with them. And I think, you know, it's something that people grew up seeing in movies or even old movies. Or one thing that occurred to us through this project is that, you know, even on our cell phones, the icons for the telephone are still referencing the old handset.

And so there's some legibility still. And I think for kids, it's really fun to pick up a phone and kind of recognize what this archaic technology sounds like. And then for people who grew up with telephones, the actual audio fidelity has a real nostalgic quality, whether it's the sound of the ringtone or the dial tone or just the kind of EQ profile that a voice gets through a telephone

handset. Kids love it. Let's hear another message left by a child. A place that feels like home to me is my old house because we lived there for a long time and I miss that house a lot and have a lot of happy memories there. So that place feels like home to me. Caitlin, what do you think is going on there? This person's young person is saying this into a phone, not even sure that somebody's on the other end listening. Yeah. Well, and I hear that

voice and I hear a kid who sounds kind of sad actually. Like there's a lot of layers that you hear in a voice and it's really interesting because we have no idea what they look like. Like this is anonymous caller. It's not like the, you know, we have no surveillance in the park. There might be surveillance in the park, but it's certainly not our surveillance. And you're making the decision to pick up a phone. And if that phone rings enough times and nobody picks up, you can leave this message. And each one of these phones kind of has a different thematic. So that particular phone would have been the home phone where you can you can leave a message about a place that feels like home. And so I hear this little kid's voice and I think,

like, oh, this is someone who's like, maybe they're not talking to anybody about these feelings. You know, maybe nobody's asked them, like, what is a place that feels like home? And you hear this, like, kind of rich kind of layer of longing and like, and it is, to me, that voice is sad. But you know what? That kid might have just been tired. Like, we have no way of knowing what was actually going through their head because it wasn't a conversation.

It is like, it's something that someone was willing to leave us as like a little message, as a little, as a little story. I asked Wayne why you did this, and part of the reason why you did this is tell me about your grandmother. Oh, yeah. So my grandma, Rose Skalski, actually, it would have been her 100th birthday tomorrow. So she died last year. She was 99. My grandma was a telephone operator in Edmonton in the 1950s. And she actually worked for Alberta government telephones. So not at the building right next to the park, but in a building very similar to it. And so when we landed this art commission, she was the first person that I called. because I was like, Grandma, which Alberta government telephones building did you work at? Was it this one?

She's like, no, it wouldn't have been there, but it would have been a building quite similar to that. Anyway, so she worked as a telephone operator. And it was funny when we were really kind of working site responsibly to develop new artwork for this particular park. Because you go in without a plan, without a concept, and you build your concept in relation to the place itself. One of the things that we were thinking about was play. and there were so many seniors who used the park, even though we were asked to design an artwork that was essentially for kids, more seniors use the park than children. And so I was thinking about my grandmother, and I was thinking about how my grandma plays or played. And, you know, when your mobility kind of goes down and you can't maybe move so much, one of the things that you do for fun is you do call your friends and you do call your family and you have these little moments of banter.

And I don't know if you have a living senior relative, but some of the things that you do. those phone calls are what, like 45 seconds to two minutes, if you're lucky. And entirely unpredictable. Yeah, entirely unpredictable. And they could be talking about a memory from 50 years ago, you know, like, but usually it's this kind of little, like, moment of banter back and forth. And I think my grandma had a lot of fun calling people. And if I went to visit her, we would call people on the phone.

Like, that's one of the things that we would do. We'd look up telephone numbers of her living friends, and we would call them and we'd check in to see how they were doing. And so we were thinking about that as a way of playing. and a way of kind of playing across generations. So she's really one of the inspirations of this particular artwork. And it's so nice to talk about her the day before what would have been her 100th birthday. Wayne, you mentioned intergenerational kind of connections.

I mean, and that's in many ways the thrust of this. What to you is interesting to get people from across generations talking to each other on the line? Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting to bring folks from all manner of backgrounds together. And that's what's exciting about this piece. It sort of satisfies the curiosity. So if you're walking through this park and you hear a telephone ringing and, you know, no one else is around to answer it. I think a lot of us have enough curiosity to at least be invited in to pick it up and see what's happening and who's on the other line. And we've seen some pretty exciting moments where, you know, there's like a kid asking for help with their math homework from an adult who they don't know who it is across the park and all sorts of stuff or people pretending to order pizzas from each other, you know, whatever element of play comes through or real meaningful conversation.

and people who end up meeting each other in person. And, you know, there's got to be so much that we don't know about because the messages only get recorded when there isn't a conversation. But I think by now there must have been thousands and thousands of conversations and hopefully some great connections. Here's one more message. Have a listen. Hi. I'd just like to give thanks for the land, the trees, the water, the air we breathe.

I'd like to send love, light, healing, faith, and abundance to the universe. Wayne, what do you make of that? It's beautiful. I mean, and for us, that's really part of this project is having a space to receive messages and, you know, people's perspectives. But I'm really touched to hear that. It's wonderful. What kind of person takes on the law? Can they ever really know what they're getting into?

A really tough-looking guy came up to us and said, Are you part of this gay case? My family started getting death threats. I wasn't able to go outside alone anymore. I'm Phelan Johnson, host of See You in Court, a new podcast about the cases that changed Canada and the ordinary people who made history. This is David and Goliath we have here.

Find and follow C. You in Court wherever you get your podcasts. Caitlin, can we just talk about... We've used this word play over and over again. Can we talk about how you... see the idea of play? There's this sense that young people play, but as you get older, that kind of gets drummed out of you and that if you're playing, you're wasting time. Shouldn't you be doing something more productive than playing? How do you see that? It's kind of the same question as like asking like, why be curious, you know, like why continue to be curious across

the, across the decades? Like, I feel like it is something that we deprioritize as we move through life. In a lot of ways, it's kind of practically deprioritized out of you. And I feel like that's a real shame. And we are quite curious people, I think, just naturally. And it's wonderful actually being able to work as an artist because there are so many people who address the practicalities, especially of public space. Like, there are urban planners, there's politicians, there's all these different people who are really kind of like programming public space. And one of the things that we get to do as a job, which is so awesome, is we get to wander into space and just be curious about it.

Like, who's here? Who's not here? How is this space being used? What are the like physical, psychological, spiritual kind of ways that people use this space? And how are they not using this space? And there's a bit of mischief that happens when you begin to like prioritize ways of being curious or ways of playing in a space. And so I feel like the role of public mischief, oh my goodness, it sounds like not what I

mean. But anyway, the role of like mischievously thinking about public space. and all the ways that we have been taught to use it and then the ways that we could be using it. And it's the same as being like, you know, there's the ways that you're taught to engage with people in a public space and the ways that you could be engaging with other people in public space and the could be is a really lovely place to exist.

So we see an example of that, not just in the park, but in your new installation at this library in Airdrie that just opened up. The installation is called Landscapes of the Imagination, these 50 acrylic globes that have 3D, printed scenes from people's favorite books, as well as some things from the community like grain elevators and what have you. Wayne, just briefly pin us a picture of this. What does it look like? Yeah, so as you enter the Erdry's new multi-use facility and library called Inspire, you're greeted with this installation immediately from the main entrance, and it's kind of this

swirling cloud of hanging spheres in the atrium. There are 50 of them. They're about two feet in diameter and they're kind of rising up in an organic formation into this atrium. There's a second story balcony also from which you can view them more closely. And yeah, each scene has a kind of a brass dish on the bottom and then within the scene is, or within the globe, is a scene that we've designed and 3D printed that's inspired by people's favorite books. Where did this come from? Oh, so we've always wanted to make art for the library. This is a great pleasure for We were, I was at least a voracious reader as a kid. You probably were too big.

Yeah, definitely. And I feel like that that place of reading really taught us how to be imaginative adults. And so there was a call for submissions for designing a new artwork for the Airdry Public Library, brand new building, shiny new building, much used library, one of the most used libraries per capita in Alberta. And so when we were thinking about, again, this site, this idea of being site responsive, of making work in response to a particular location. all the practicalities of what a library is these days were being addressed. Like this idea of libraries being meeting places, social spaces, spaces where people use the computer, places where people check out DVDs, and then places where people read. And so we were able to kind of think about the romantic, the most romantic aspect of books. And so books for us are doorways.

And they're doorways into these other worlds. and those other worlds look like all kinds of things. But walking through those worlds is one of the most magical things that you can do as a human being. And books are very different than TV. They're very different than a lot of the other media that we commonly consume, even though the amount of readership has gone down kind of steadily over the last couple of decades. Books do this thing where you like walk right into your imagination.

And so what we were interested in is like could we as kind of curious people, walk into the imagination of other people through their favorite books and stories. And so we imagined actually the form, like all these bubbles, these sort of thought bubbles rising into this atrium. And then we left space so that we could interview people in the community about their favorite books and stories because, you know, we don't know what the favorite books and stories of people are. And so it was kind of an interesting thing to like leave that door, yeah, leave that door cracked for other people to kind of find space in the artwork. So I want to play one of those little interviews.

This is, I mean, you spoke with some of the librarians who nominated books and recorded this for us. This is Kim telling you about her selection. My favorite book is I'll Love You Forever by Robert Munch, and I love it because it's so heartfelt, and I learned to read on it when I was seven. Oh, how does it feel to see that inside a dome inside the library? Oh, I love pointing it out to everyone. That's my book there. Oh, that's so nice. Wayne, people love this story.

This Robert Munch book, I mean, if you're a parent, you've probably cried to your kids as you've read the book to them. Tell me what you created to capture that. Yeah, so for that scene in particular, we created the scene with the rocking chair, the carpet, and the end table with a lamp and a telephone on it. And for us, one thing to mention about this installation is that we don't have any characters in these scenes. So we've just decided to create the locations of the landscapes or something that's evocative but non-animate. So, yeah, in this case, it's the scene. And then as the viewer of this installation, the idea is that you project yourself into this. And it's kind of a way of, again, pulling you into this other world that a book creates.

Here's another person who works in the library. Her name is Deb. Growing up, my father was the person who read to me. But the Secret Garden is something I associate with my mom. She started reading it to me, and then she went back to work. So she recorded the rest of it for me. So I was able to play it at any point in time. And be near her when she'd gone back to work.

I can still remember the opening line of Chapter 6, and then the rain came down in torrents or something like that. Caitlin, that's a really intimate moment. Yeah. And it's there for public consumption as well. What is that like? Oh, public intimacy is what it's all about, man. Deb was one of our first people to come up to us during our kind of intensive interview process. Deb is also the head of the Erd Republic Library and just a really magical woman.

And she was like, I have a book for you. I know you're doing this project, and I need to tell you about, I need, like there was a yearning to tell us about her favorite book, The Secret Garden. And that was one of the first pieces that we modeled was The Secret Garden. And what it looks like is it's like a little chunk of wall with a door in it that's just cracked open. And one side of the wall has very few plants. And the other side of the wall is just overflowing with plants and this big kind of gnarly tree. And something that you actually can't see as a viewer, but Deb knows about it's top. secret is that there's a little golden key in the door. And so the scenes are all monochromatic

blank page white, but there is just a little golden key just for Deb. She also mentioned another book, right, The Handmaid's Tale. Yeah, that's right. I mean, that book for all the current reasons, but it's not just current, is interesting to think about it just in terms of its place in a library, how some people might want to take it out of a library, the importance of it being in the library. What does that book speak to you? Yeah. Well, I think it's also important when you do a project like this, people sometimes think of art as being just for children. And, I mean, you've already heard that that's something that we do consider folks of all ages in our work. And I think it's really important that this particular installation didn't just include beautiful children's narratives or nostalgic books from childhood.

Like a lot of people talked about nostalgic books. But The Handmaid's Tale, it was Deb's second favorite book that she was, talking about actually changed the course of her career, right? And so the handmade still is a really important book. And you get these books that are really important. Like 1984 is one of our books. I think that's a, unfortunately, it's kind of come back into the popular consciousness because these messages kind of recur time and time again, right? And so the messaging of these books, you know, it might be difficult content, but you really need to be able to read and acknowledge that content. And here in Alberta, there have been conversations.

about what should and shouldn't be accessible within library spaces, especially to people under the age of 18. And that accessibility of information is really important. And you think about when you read the books that are most formative in you becoming who you are, you read a lot of those books when you're young. And actually, sometimes younger than people think that you should be when you read them. I think about some of my most formative books that sometimes included

what people would have considered adult content. And I think that those books were really important for me to read when I was like 15, 16, because I was already in art school by the time I was 17. You know, you're already released out into the world and you already have a good idea of kind of who you are in the world. And so access to this kind of literature is really important. We're almost at a time. I want to squeeze in one more book that inspired this project. And this is from a librarian named Jameson. I chose the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson in the global.

you'll see Erythiru, which is the city carved out of the tip of the mountain. This series actually means a lot to me. All of the characters are struggling through their own problems, and they get through it by the end of the series. This is the first series I've ever read where there was the hope of just because you're broken doesn't mean you'll be the villain. Wayne, what does that say to you? It's about the power of reading.

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you know, we're excited with this project about the visual aspect of books and sort of the romantic places they can take you. But beyond that, the next layer is really the impact of books and the way that books help shape who you are and can offer you insight and motivation and perspective and, you know, inspiration. I have to let you both go, but it's just, this is the definition of public art.

Not just a piece of art that is out in the public, but the public being part of the art. Do you go and do you watch people interact with the things that you create, Caitlin? Oh, it's been so wonderful actually watching. So we had the grand opening on the weekend at Airdrie Public Library for this artwork. I mean, Airdrie's not used to getting nice things. Everybody keeps saying it. But this building is gorgeous.

And it's so wonderful to be kind of the cherry on top of that and just watch people. We had our little opera glasses with us in the space and we kept on handing them to people so that they could appear more closely at these beautifully modeled little scenes. And, you know, there's so much to look at. And we hope that it's an artwork that continues to unfold for years to come just like the library. It's just, this is just the first page. I have to come and see both of these things. Please do. I would love this.

Thank you both for talking to us about it. Thank you very much for having us. Caitlin Brown and Wayne Garrett are artists in Calgary. Their latest art installation, landscapes of the imagination open this weekend at the Aird Republic Library. And if you're in Edmonton, get on the blower on that park you can talk on the phone to somebody who happens to be on the other end of the line. You've been listening to the current podcast.

My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.