Animikii - Flies the Thunder
Anne Allardyce
22’h (6.70m) x 12’ (3.65m) diameter
15’ (4.57m) diameter pedestal
Stainless steel, rock/stone, concrete, black granite
Installed in 1992
Kaministiquia River Heritage Park
Animikii – Flies the Thunder is one of the City’s first commissioned works of contemporary public art. The sculpture, located along the Kaministiquia (“Kam”) River, was part of the City’s renewal of the Kaministiquia River Heritage Park.
The art competition was originally framed by information about the critical role that the river played in the economic development of the Fort William community. For decades, the river was a transportation corridor into the interior of northwest Ontario, providing a means to transport the various goods that fueled the rapid growth of the community in the 19th century: fish and furs, grain, coal, and oil.
Allardyce, a Toronto-based artist, proposed a concept that took this historical knowledge and broadened it to include how the river and surrounding landscape were linked to the people that lived in the area before large-scale developments were introduced. In her own words “…despite the vibrant commercial history of the river, my sculpture should return to an earlier period, to the pre-industrial Kam, to the natural waterway which is now returning to life.”
The silvery winged form clutches a stylized version of the river; the sculpture rests on a base of rough rock encircled by stone slabs inscribed with Ojibwa and English text. Allardyce explained in her proposal that “the curves of this sculptural river…duplicate the actual course of the Kaministiquia revealed in maps and aerial photographs of the City.”
She further explains that:
The imagery is common to many traditions and is familiar to us all on the natural world: bird (or winged figures of many kinds), nest, river. And so my inspiration comes form many sources: words and place names, oral and written tradition, history of art, natural history, local history / heritage and geography / place. The sculpture, in other words, arises from various traditions and sources, in response to a special place: the banks of the Kaministiquia, with Mount McKay in view, Sleeping Giant not far away.
