Everything’s different on the ground than in the drawings.  I’ve had the experience of making things on paper and then seeing them built, and the size is different, the scale’s different, the feel…  And even doing a 3-D rendering, or model, where you can pan around it and go in it and orbit all over the place, it’s still totally different in person.  

On paper, things are huge.  That’s one thing. There’s a white space, a universe on the paper or the screen, and it’s huge. 

And it feels complicated and massive and endless and huge, and then when you see it, it’s not. It’s actually very small, wasn’t that big a deal.  The same thing happens when things are horizontal and then they extrude up vertically or are tilted up and they take vertical space…  if you look at a 30-foot column that’s lying on the ground, it doesn’t look that big. Once it’s raised up, it takes on an outsize feel, there’s more to it now. There’s a feeling that you get from the thing rising up.  So that’s always different.

Like Collection Point, that’s a massive building that it’s going in front of.  It’s a 3 or 4 block building, and it has to anchor one corner of it completely.  And it’s a lot of blank wall on the building. It was very nice to see the actual scale–it’s not just a nice little piece of art that you put down on a pedestal which would occupy a nice space and all–but it’s more of a construction, that actually the building can’t ignore.  That’s cool, because then I feel like I’m part of the dialogue. This thing–it’s not just some little piece of art, it’s part of the situation. There’s no missing it.  

And when it all comes together? It’s the reason I do this.  It’s a thrill.

I always don’t think I can do it, so when I see it–I always have doubts the whole way, from every beginning to end. But I go along with it. So it’s proof that I CAN do it.  And then I forget that and go on to the next one and have the doubts all over again… But then to actually see something in reality… because there’s a lot of history that’s developed in the meantime with the project.  There’s issues, there’s budget, there’s meetings, there’s re-designs–so it all adds up and it all comes down to whatever exists. It becomes a thing, it takes up space, and for a while it’s thrilling.  It’s really cool.

collection point, Minneapolis, public art