BC ARTISTS: George Norris sculpture Bridge Marker

Bridge Marker by George Norris

This photograph by the Editor shows the Norris sculpture Bridge Marker around summer 2000. By this time the glass top and frame, as well as all of the glass spheres, had been destroyed and removed from the sculpture. The lower structure is intact, and the cupped seats for the glass spheres are visible in the bronze framework. Each of these seats was lined with heavy rubber pads to cushion the spheres. George Norris told me in a telephone interview that the spheres were laboratory flasks, made in England.

The four wings of the sculpture's base fan out on low concrete walls, each with a site uplight cast in place to illuminate the sculpture. The spheres, originally full of inert liquid so that they would provide refraction, were linked to an electric pump system that filled the spheres full of the fluid, and presumably could be used to "top them up" if necessary. The sculpture was designed into the entire landscaped corner, and part of the retaining wall around the sculpture's plinth is visible in the foreground. It is quite amazing that a public sculpture of this magnitude could simply be destroyed and removed.

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