Welded steel, 90 x 28 x 24, 1999.
The title is an inside joke. Bill Street, of the UofA music department, was the external examiner of the artist’s graduate thesis. “Easy Street” asks him to go easy, and the sculpture makes the request in his own field.
It is a busker’s pitch laid out for a music professor. A low case sits on the ground, with a ring pull and a drawer front like a latch. A round opening in its lid reads as the dish where passersby leave coins. A horn rises from the case in a J-shaped bend, as a saxophone’s does, aimed up and out at whoever is passing. A tall sign hangs overhead from a wire hooked to the horn, the largest form in the piece and the only one above head height. It carries no lettering, and the title is what it announces. The pitch is Street, and the audience being played to is the man named on the sign.
A busker offers his playing and asks for a tip in return. The sculpture supplies the instrument and the sign, and it has a dish waiting at the foot. A tip is also a piece of advice, and the dish waits for a generous one. The horn climbs in one smooth diagonal with no step or joint in it, which makes the way up to the sign an easy one. The appeal is open and the horn is silent. The sculpture asks to be received kindly and says so on its sign.
