In a bid to raise the final funds to purchase the Salish Sea artwork by Chris Paul and bring the Salish Sea itself to the forefront, Bill Smith organized a selfie campaign.
Salish Sea started as an artwork on loan for Oak Bay’s inaugural summer art walk in 2014. Since then, arts laureate Barbara Adams has been working toward raising the purchase price to make the Salish Sea sculpture the first municipally owned piece of fine art.
“Everybody’s feeling now that they know what the Salish Sea is,” Smith said.
Smith devised a way to do that using the maintained popularity of the selfie – the Salish Sea Selfie contest – as “an intensive pre-Christmas fun campaign.”
Entrants have three ways to snap themselves with the Salish Sea: in front of the sculpture adjacent to Oak Bay Marina, in front of the giclée at Oak Bay Beach Hotel, or in front of the vast Salish Sea off our doorstep.
“The selfie is a bit of a con, any photograph is fine,” Smith says.
Submissions will be entered to win one of five pairs of pool passes to the Oak Bay Beach Hotel with a grand prize of a stay in a panoramic ocean-view room at the hotel.
“We’re affecting the consciousness of Oak Bay and we want to pay off the artwork,” Smith said. “(Adams) doesn’t want it stuck in a pile of rocks. She wants a performance area. … I want it to be a cool place and it will fit in with whatever’s developed in the area.”
With future endeavours in mind, Oak Bay Beach Hotel offered its lobby area display through the first three months of 2016 to promote the Salish Sea, both sculpture and bioregion, as Smith has two more events in the planning phase for coming months.
The contest is by donation. Learn more and upload photos online at selfie.cattlepoint.org, the Canada Trust branch in Athlone Court, 2187 Oak Bay Ave. or at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel.
Contest deadline is Jan. 2, 2016.