Trail Blazers is a weekly feature in partnership with the Trail Museum and Archives.
Preparations for the museum’s next exhibition of Cominco folk art are in full swing.
There is perhaps no better example of the art produced at Cominco than the Picasso replica that hangs in front of Selkirk College on Cedar Avenue across from Helena Street.
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His arrival in downtown Trail is an interesting story.
The sculpture is a replica of the Chicago Picasso, a work commissioned by the architects of the Chicago Civic Center (now known as Daley Plaza).
It was unveiled there on August 15, 1967, four years after Pablo Picasso was first asked to design something for the space.
The unveiling of the 15-meter-high structure attracted thousands of spectators and caused a lot of provocation.
What should it represent?
There are numerous theories that support the role that abstract art plays in stimulating creativity and deeper thought in its viewers.
One of those spectators was Joe Szajbely, a senior project engineer at Cominco who managed Acid Plant No. 9 in the 1970s.
Szajbely was described as an exuberant leader who took pride in his team’s work to reduce harmful emissions in our community and beyond.
On a trip to Chicago, Szajbely was so moved by the giant sculpture that he used its image as a now famous one-page dedication for his project.
In what was apparently a secret initiative that was certainly not approved or even controlled from above, the workshops set to work producing a scale model of the sculpture.
Szajbely hoped the piece would stand proudly in front of the new factory.
After its completion, however, Cominco’s management was not particularly enthusiastic.
Former Cominco general manager Marc Marcolin was either upset by the amount of resources devoted to the work, which he called an “atrocity,” or by the confusing proposed location for a modern artwork, and so Szajbely was ordered to remove it altogether.
Eventually the city of Trail accepted the statue.
It was installed along the esplanade on Eldorado Street in late October 1977, certainly not where it was intended.
40 years later, in 2007, the city had it removed for the purpose of modernizing its infrastructure.
At some point during this time, the sculpture, once made of metal, was painted blue, red and yellow.
In October 2020, after a years-long call to restore and re-exhibit the sculpture, the city re-installed it in Trail’s emerging arts district.
The lack of time is Szajbely’s reason for choosing this particular sculpture.
Which Chicago Picasso was in harmony with No. 9 Acid Plant and Cominco at Szajbely?
Could the smelting works, which tower over a small mountain town and seem almost entirely out of place, be linked to the woman/Afghan Hound/baboon/bird seen in the sculpture?
Did the smelter elicit a similar reaction from people who saw it for the first time?
Does the smelter mean something different – good and bad – to everyone who experiences it?
Perhaps.
While the city of Chicago was testing concepts for public art at the time, Cominco was certainly not interested in a similar artistic discovery.
The ORBIT magazine of October 16, 1975 published a photo of the well-known zinc plaque commemorating the opening of the plant and the nearly 800 people involved in the project.
Although it is a highly accidental work of art for a community like Trail, the story behind it is typically Cominco: We want it? We will make it happen.
And in a world and industry where intellectual property, patents and other proprietary rights are strongly protected, Szajbely was lucky!
Because the city of Chicago published plans, drawings, and even the sculpture itself without a single copyright notice, the U.S. District Court ruled in 1970 that the sculpture was in the public domain.
We are lucky!
The museum welcomes any items (official or unofficial) made at Cominco for its upcoming exhibition.
