Passage was a super satisfying project, one of the best memories.  It was 2011, it was a solo project, it was a grant–a state arts board grant–so I came up with an idea, got a grant to do it, and it was just me.  That was a *great* project, and really, it was wrapping a bridge with fiber, and the idea was to find a bridge that could be wrapped.  So I researched bridges.  I wanted to do a historic bridge, and obviously it had to be a certain kind.  It couldn’t be in use now, and it had to be in a site where I could move around it.  There had to be all these conditions, actually, including can I actually attach the fiber?  How am I going to get it across?

So that was part of the grant, to research bridges, visit them.  And I found this one, about 10 miles out of St. Peter.  And it was in Lake Washington Park, a big, beautiful park surrounded by fields and everything, and there was this old bridge that had been relocated there, an 1873 wrought iron bridge put across this creek.  It’s just a walking bridge now. 

I found out who owned the bridge, whose jurisdiction this was in. It was in Le Sueur county, and I somehow got contacts of the council people or something.  I don’t remember the specifics, but I got on the agenda for their monthly council board meeting.  I sent them all letters introducing myself and saying what I wanted to do, and that I would present it at this meeting.  All I asked for was 10 or 15 minutes of their time, and I put the presentation boards up with the renderings . I said that I come fully funded, I’m insured, this thing will come down at a certain point, I will de-install it, and it will enhance the park… I just sold them.  And they unanimously voted: do it.  It was no money from them, and they’re not liable for anything–I’ve got the insurance.  So what do they have to lose, really?

It was a very small grant, but it was awesome.  I got tons of fiber with the grant, used the park’s community building as a storage place, and drove down there from the city for two weeks.

The bridge was about 117 feet long.  And it’s quite tall–15, 16 feet.  And I rented rolling scaffolding and set the system up so I’d start at one end and I’d work my way down.

The fiber’s about three-quarters of an inch wide, so I would tie it down low on the bridge on one side, go all the way over the bridge, climb up the scaffolding, bring it down to the other side and tie it on, and see how that went.  And it was slow and difficult, and I thought, if I do this with one spool at a time, I’ll be here until way beyond Christmas.  It’s going to be zero degrees, and I’m never going to be done! So then I came up with an idea to use multiple spools at a time. I had this pipe that I could put the spools on.  I could get about three or four–I could get more, but I had to carry them up the scaffolding. 

In one hand I had this pole with spools–big spools–and then I’m climbing with the other hand.  It was totally not safe… it was definitely stupid.  I could have easily fallen off. It’s not high up off the creek, but there’s a lot of stuff on the way down.  But I did this and I think I ended up with three, I think four was too many.

Because one of the things that came to light was the wind, that I had never experienced in summer when I had visited. Somehow in the fall when I actually did the installation, it was like a wind tunnel down there.

So I’ve got these spools, and I have four ends tied on, and I’m dragging the spools up over the scaffolding so there’s more and more fiber being let loose, and I don’t want it to unspool all the way, so that was an issue–how do you lock these spools?–but I still had to unreel it as I go over.  I don’t remember how I solved that.  And then when I get to the other end, I’d have to keep track of them, and they’re crossing over there at the top. And if I had to climb back up to uncross them, it was a real pain, in a big way.  But I figured it out, I got into a rhythm.  

[Next time: more about the challenges of installing Passage!]

installation, Passage, St. Peter