As the continuous flow of buses fills the bus loop at Durham College’s (DC) and UOIT campus, it’s hard to miss the shiny steel circle, which greets students each day. Because the sculpture is at the hub of the campus, it’s of little wonder that the structure has become a symbol of DC and UOIT. Commonly known as the ‘Big O,’ the sculpture has become a landmark for several generations of students, but the artist of the piece, Edward Falkenberg, knows it by another name: Connect.
Falkenberg, a Pickering-based artist, designed the sculpture more than a decade ago. According to Falkenberg, DC approached him in 2001 to submit a design for a proposed sculpture to be paired with the introduction of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology to the Oshawa campus.
At the time, Falkenberg was designing a piece for a competition at the Robert McLaughin Gallery and didn’t think he had time for another project. Wanting to submit something, but not wanting to overwhelm himself with projects, he handed in a drawing based off of the circular design he was entering in the McLaughin Gallery competition.
To Falkenberg’s surprise, shortly after he submitted the design, he was notified that his design had won a competition.. “I said, what do you mean I won? I had no idea I was in a competition,” he says.
Falkenberg faced more than the surprise of a new project suddenly appearing on his plate. Even though Falkenberg had worked on larger pieces in the past, the sculpture’s projected size of 16 feet would require outside help.
“Any project of this size you need heavy equipment,” he says. “You need cranes to lift the heavy material.”
He gave the concept to a company called ALL-WELD, a metal fabrication company in Scarborough, who began construction in 2003. According to Falkenberg, this was the first piece he hadn’t physically worked on and during the two-and-a-half month construction, he visited every week to be as involved as possible with the 4,400 pound sculpture.
In 2004, when the sculpture was installed, Falkenberg was blown away when he saw it. “It’s a whole different feeling seeing it outside,” he says. “I hadn’t seen it upright until it was installed. It had been all in my imagination.” Even though the art piece was planned for several destinations, including the corner of Simcoe St. and Conlin Rd., Falkenberg is pleased with where his piece ended up. “That circle gives that space a lot of energy and even though it’s just a circle, the physical size of it gives the feeling of welcome,” he describes.
Falkenberg says the main inspiration for the piece was the idea of connections: between the community, students and at the time, the new university. The six segments featured in the piece represent those connections. The segments joined together form a circular shape that shows the continual flow of those connections. The well-known “O” shape adds a final connection to the piece; it’s a link to Oshawa and Ontario.
For a sculpture based on connections, there has been one major disconnect: the name of the piece. The sculpture has often been listed as ‘The Circle of Knowledge’ in many publications, but Falkenberg says the name has always been Connect. The proof is welded into the back of sculpture next to his signature.
Falkenberg began his life as an artist at the age of 24, when he quit his plumbing, heating and supply company job in Alberta, packed his bags and journeyed to Ontario to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design. According to Falkenberg, he has always been a natural artist. As a child, his father, who was a dental technician, would bring home modeling clay he used to make false teeth. “I would make little shoes, wheelbarrows, figures and faces. All kinds of things,” Falkenberg recalls.
He attended the Ontario College of Art and Design and was hooked. “A whole world opened up to me and this was exactly what I wanted to do,” he says. Now at age 80, he has designed many works throughout his career, including a piece for the Canadian Embassy in Saudi Arabia. But Connect has always been his most appreciated piece. “I’ve had more feedback for this piece than any other piece I have done in my whole career,” he says. Falkenberg says he still has more ideas bouncing around in his head then he knows what to do with. “As an artist you never retire, you just keep doing things until you can’t lift your hands anymore,” he laughs.
