Nil Nisi Optimum

Project Background

​

A school located in Alberta, Canada reached out to its community (alumni, parents, and faculty) to submit proposals for a meaningful and significant artwork to mark the 50th anniversary of the school's founding.  Spencer Purdy Architecture's design was chosen and installed in 2022.

​

 

Project Narrative & Design

​

In celebration of the 50 years in which Strathcona Tweedsmuir School has evolved into the community it is today, this eight foot high stainless steel sculpture celebrates a philosophical inquiry into the school maxim ‘Nil Nisi Optimum’. Students, faculty, and alumni were asked to reflect on what ‘doing our best’ meant to them. This sculpture is inscribed with the 200 anonymous responses collected, uncategorically laid out in five exponentially increasing panels within the footprint of a Fibonacci spiral.

 

The viewer is pulled into the central core of the spiral which, using the mathematics of the Fibonacci algorithm, begins with a one foot panel and climbs to eight feet high. Inscriptions and engravings have been laid out across the panels, making some responses legible from within the sculpture and others from the outside. The result is dynamic and immersive, with words and visuals changing from every angle of the sun or position of the viewer.

 

Considered to be a collaborative project that would incorporate as many interpretations and voices as possible, this sculpture is the expression of how our numerous and divergent ‘ways of life’ become the foundation of a community. The sum of these remarks celebrates the diversity of the human experience, the multitude of ways in which we can engage with our world, and the reasons why we do so.