U of A student calls out university signage error with a sculpture

Julianna Dust, a fifth year bachelor of design student at the University of Alberta, installed a sculpture outside of the southern doors of the University Commons building, pointing to spelling mistakes on an official university sign. The sculpture was up for a couple weeks, before disappearing towards the beginning of December. 

Dust said the sculpture is a part of a class project. “The purpose of the project was to create a site-specific sculpture. One whose meaning doesn’t really come into full fruition until it’s in a particular scene or environment,” Dust explained. 

She said she’s been aware of the errors on the sign for over a year, and thought this project made for a good opportunity to address it. 

“I made sure that it was not physically interacting with the existing sign to avoid any conflict there,” Dust said. “But, the sign that I made is a structural ‘S’ used with negative space and then a quite obvious apostrophe. And, there’s three arms that extend out and directly point to each grammatical error on the way-finding sign.”

Dust said this sign isn’t the only one on campus with grammatical errors. “There’s another [on] Students’ Boulevard, and again, it uses singular possessive not the plural possessive. That one is between Rutherford Library and the Old Arts Building,” she said. 

“I debated just taking a sharpie and literally correcting the sign,” Dust says

Dust said “my [teaching assistant ] (TA) in that class said she felt it was like I was very respectfully putting up the middle finger, which I think kind of sums that up well.”

Ensuring the work was not disrespectful was a big part of the project for Dust. “One tricky thing coming up with the idea for the sculpture was, because I don’t know if you classify this as activism or art or sculptural critique, but a lot of them are much more extreme or crass. And that’s not something that I wanted to do. I wanted to be a bit classier in part to avoid getting in trouble, but also I’m just not a crass person. I like things to be very purposeful and neat,” she said. 

Dust considered a couple ways to call attention to the sign as well. “Last year I debated just taking a sharpie and literally correcting the sign. And then I also thought about having a sculpture away from the sign and something like a viewfinder, [or] a telescope you look through that points directly to the errors,” Dust explained. 

“It’s just a facade that’s covering up a decline in the standard of education at the U of A,” Dust says

Dust said the student responses have been interesting as well, with some students acknowledging and not questioning the work, and others not noticing it at all. “It’s been interesting, the lack of response. [It’s] kind of on the issue of being observant and critically thinking as students who are supposed to be taking in our environments and thinking for ourselves and perceiving in ways that are academic and intellectual. And, that kind of not happening in a way. Just through the lack of awareness in your surroundings,” she said. 

And Dust said she thinks this speaks to the awareness of U of A authorities as well. “Do they actually walk around their own campus? Do they actually observe what’s going on? Or are they just in their offices making decisions that are so disconnected from the reality of what’s actually happening at the university?”

“There’s a sign that probably [cost] thousands of dollars, and then this grammatical error on it,” she added. “And then in the brand new University Commons, millions of dollars, right? What does that actually matter if there’s this disconnect between what is being presented and the quality of education that we’re actually getting? Sure, the buildings are maybe nice and pretty and new, but our tuition is going towards that and not actually going towards improving education … it seems like it’s just a facade that’s covering up a decline in the standard of education at the U of A.”