Big Edge - Huge Canoe Sculpture

Artist Nancy Rubins stands in the middle of the CityCenter construction site — a vast valley of gravel, concrete and machinery surrounded by towering glass architecture. She secures her hard hat in 50 mph winds and directs crew members who are installing a canoe onto “Big Edge.” More than 200 aluminum boats — canoes, rowboats and flat-bottomed boats — make up the wild bouquet of color and shape juxtaposed against surrounding monochromatic glass buildings. Attached to an armature and to one another, the boats shoot upward and outward and are supported by cantilevers. It looks as if they were tossed into the air and captured in a freeze frame. Her crew members climb the sculpture as if in trees, connecting the boats, weblike, with steel wires. There are no blueprints to follow, no sketches to examine, no three-dimensional models to consider. Rubins is essentially flower arranging with more than 200 boats, weighing 60 to 125 pounds. “You have to put it together in your brain,” she says. “It’s hard to grasp it all at once. But it comes quickly for me.”