Over the course of 2022, artists Rawry & Pohly collected Chinese recipes, tips, tricks, and general cooking knowledge. The goal was to create a work that reminds people with connections to Chinese cultural heritage to write down and record recipes from their elders and relatives before those recipes are lost.

As methods of cooking these foods, their exact ingredients and the dishes produced are often difficult to pass down, the artists felt an urgency they wanted to press onto the younger generation. Calgary-specific Chinese recipes are unique in their location and their ancestry and worthy of historical record-keeping.

Lost & Found consist of three parts: a layered relief mural depicting the artist’s late grandfather teaching his sister how to cook bok choy, a 6-foot-tall sculpture of a bok choy, and a cookbook available for viewing both physically and virtually via QR code.

This project was funded through 2020 public art microgrants which supported artists impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. We invited Calgary and area artists to submit their project ideas to create art in public spaces. Professional artists of all experience levels were encouraged to partner with community associations, businesses or private landowners to explore any form of public art in any part of the city.

The successful artists were asked to consider three things:

• Connection to place: How does your artistic idea connect to the location and its history?
• Engaging the community: How is your artwork connected to the community and the people in it?
• Fostering dialogue: How will your artwork create dialogue about diversity, empathy, accessibility, equality, social justice and/or the environment, as well as Indigenous history and creating a path towards reconciliation?

Rawry & Pohly consists of two artists: Jamie Mason and Kevin Chow. Rawry & Pohly's artwork focuses on encouraging play and revisiting one's childhood through the lens of visual art to celebrate the inner child.

As artists, they specialize in stylistic interpretations of modern pop art with elements of minimalism, using mixed media on canvas, sculpture and print. A key element of their approach to visual art and encouraging play is to create artwork that's accessible to the public: This means creating art that's immediately recognizable and meaningful to the viewer.