We criss-crossed Manitoba when I was a kid. We camped every weekend, from spring snow storms to the invariable Thanksgiving snowstorm that erased memory of the 10 foot piles of oak leaves we would gather and vault ourselves into long jump style.

Sitting in the back of the suburban minding time, I would drift off to sleep, lulled by steady stare at the swoop and droop of the utility lines gliding by in rhythmic flow.

We don’t think much about infrastructure. It’s just there. Like lint, or soap in the shower. Garbage cans. Utility poles. Benches. Directional signs. Streetlights. Most of it is designed to just be present. We apply North American design standards that make a streetlight in Kentucky pretty much like a streetlight in Alberta. Some of it stands out for being particularly ugly, like too many signs or power lines. Almost none of it could be considered the subject of whimsy, surprise, or dare I say inspiration.

Why? It’s so ubiquitous. Our brains crave something interesting to look at. It doesn’t cost a whole lot more to think about infrastructure as more artful.

Well – because it’s easier, it may be just a little cheaper, and we don’t make demands on anyone to change the way things are. So we get more of the same. More of the blah, more of the grey amidst the rainbows we paint in our imagination. The cost of that, added bit by bit into cumulative heavy thesis of boring, is the loss of our collective inspiration. We fail to express our cultural soul. And who knows where our whole-hearted nurturing of creativity may lead.

Someone “un-canned” a good one in Manitoba. As a kid we would drive by the signs: 10 seconds to orbit, 9 seconds to orbit, and finally….”put your trash into orbit.” These BB-8 Star Wars-like round garbage containers with the small circle to accept the orbit launching made litter reduction just a little more fun.

Gabriola Island has a pencil utility pole at a key intersection. Phoenix has cell phone towers that look like palm trees. Utility boxes in Alberta are being wrapped in nature scenes, and even art in the case of the City of Calgary (http://www.calgary.ca/CSPS/Recreation/Pages/Public-Art/Utility-Box-Public-Art-Program.aspx). Utility boxes in particular benefit from the double whammy of creating beauty from the graffiti that tends to gravitate to easy-to-reach metal boxes.