Every one of these projects–I mean, I really feel like I’m meticulous and I’m pretty detail oriented–and I never fail to be amazed at how stupid of mistakes I always make.  Sometimes they cost a lot of money. Sometimes I don’t eat as well the next month because of a problem I created! There are so many of these things.  Some of them work out to be really better because of my mistakes. That can be interesting too.

The second iteration of Filling the Void is a very simple piece. There are a couple of vertical towers, steel frames, just square, and the idea is that I would go up and weave them with fiber, starting at the top, working my way down.  I’ve done it before–it’s easy, simple. But the one thing I didn’t think about is how I would get in there to do it. And so I designed these steel frames–they’re about four foot by four foot, by–one of them is 15 feet tall, the other one is 6 or 7 feet tall.  So it’s just like a cube volume frame.

They’re sitting on a concrete pad, so the space between the concrete and the first horizontal bar, that’s the space I had to work with to get inside. The first Filling the Void had a door on hinges, and a lock; it was very easy to get into it.  You know, when we talked about the second, this version, one of the concerns was that they didn’t want people to be able to access the interior. I guess I was just thinking along those lines, so I didn’t make any access point into it. And I designed the clearance between the concrete and the steel so it looked right, and I didn’t want it to be too big for people to get in, but I didn’t verify if ANYone–particularly me–would be able to get in there! 

So the thing was installed on site and then I’m ready, I’ve got my scaffolding ready, and I’ve got fiber, and I’ve got a week or two weeks I was going to take to weave it, which turned into four weeks, but… I went to get under there, and it looked tight, and I couldn’t fit. I was thinking, I’m going to try the second side, because the concrete’s not exactly level–that was my only hope. I actually called the fabricator and I’m like, I may need some help. Because the alternative would have been to climb a ladder to get in in the top and try to weave it from the bottom.  I couldn’t enter the thing from the top and weave my way down, because then I wouldn’t be able to get out. So none of the sides work, except finally the last side–plus, my desperation level was increased by the time I got to the last side, so that may be why I fit through there. But I had to hold my breath, suck in my gut, and just do this contortion thing! So I did that and I got in. I was panicking, because I didn’t want to get stuck!

And this is at the entrance to the building, and nobody even knows what’s going on, they don’t care, it’s not that big of a deal to them.  There’s shrubs and things and people coming and going, and I’m on my back in the shrubs squeezing through this thing. So that’s how I got in.  For like a week, I would do this. My back was raw from the concrete, totally raw. And then I finally got the idea a week later to use a plastic garbage bag to slide in on.  It took me a week to recover, at least, from that. And so that’s how I did that–then I was fine. I was rolling. I’d just skip breakfast to make sure I could fit in there.

And then I was weaving, one day; I was up there, and I came down and the bag’s not there.  Because somebody I think had thrown it away, thought it was trash, so I had no bag. I was inside it, so then I had to reopen the old wounds just to get out of there again. And if that thing would’ve been designed just even a half inch or an inch larger, there’d be no problem.  It’d be fine. There’s no reason it couldn’t have been. It’s just not thinking. Always stuff like that. It kills me.

filling the void, Minneapolis, public art