College Avenue Campus green
Frog (1971)
Armature, foam, ceramic, concrete
University of Regina President’s Art Collection; pc.2022.02.
Generously supported by Phillip Tremblay, Alyce Hamon, Leslie & Gordon Diamond and ECO Concrete Levelling Ltd.
One of the most popular public sculptures in Regina, Frog was created by Joe Fafard (1942-2019) in collaboration with his all-female ART 221A class. The amphibian was an homage to the influential Funk artist, David Gilhooly (1943 – 2013), a popular instructor who radically rethought the possibilities of clay. Gilhooly’s Frog World series explored cultural figures, ancient civilizations and even food through a surreal, satirical world of his creation. You can view work by David Gilhooly inside the College Avenue campus building, in hallway CB 101.4.
Fafard’s class voted on the design, constructed the body, and produced ceramic tiles to create Frog‘s mosaic exterior. In its early days as a resident of the College Avenue campus, Frog was joined by a reclining cow, a sasquatch, a green woolly mammoth and a bust of local lawyer and art collector, Norman MacKenzie.
Both a controversial and beloved presence, Frog has been subject to theft, mischief and damage, and even survived a kidnap attempt by University of Saskatchewan Engineering students. After suffering exterior deterioration, the University completed work in 2023 to restore Frog to keep watch over College Avenue once more.
