[Read the first part of the story in the previous blog post.]

The bridge was open while I was wrapping it, so people could still walk through it.  I had great conversations with people.  It was nice.  I went down there for two weeks solid, driving down there early in the morning and leaving late at night to come back home.  And I made it across the bridge the whole way. It took me two weeks.  I broke a rib once.  I was leaning over the bridge to tie it–I had to reach down to tie the fiber to this truss thing, and it was a strain to do that, and I hear this crunch… and there’s nothing to do.  If you break a rib, you break a rib.  But it freaked me out because the whole day I was there, every day, I would rarely see people.  A few people.  But I was pretty much alone and I started thinking, what if I fell off the scaffolding?  No one would know. 

And it was starting to get cold, and the wind was blowing, and I noticed the wind would vibrate the fiber, which was awesome, because this was a very dynamic piece. They’d flutter because because it’s band, it’s not rope, so they’d flutter and they’d make noise and it was like a shimmering illusion. 

But I also noticed that it was vibrating it against the bridge, the corner of the rusty beam up there, and basically it was cutting through the fiber.  And it would happen quick.  And I had already gone substantially across the bridge and I freaking out panicking–I don’t know what to do!  Things are being sawed in half, ruining the whole thing… They’d break and flutter down and I’m like, it was going so well up until then!

So it was 10 miles back into St. Peter to the hardware store, and buy all their supply of Gorilla Tape.  The only thing I could think of was to tape the edges so it wouldn’t be sharp.  So I go up there and get under the fiber and lay this Gorilla Tape down. You couldn’t really see it. And I had to restring parts of the bridge.  But I got through it.

It was beautiful because the leaves were changing, and part of the idea was to have this be temporary, so there’s beautiful color in there, and when those leaves were gone, this would emerge with all its color.  And originally I thought it could probably stay through the winter, and then I saw what was going on with the wind and everything, and I’m like yeah, it, this is meant to stay through the first snow.  Then we’re done.

And so I changed the plan.  It snowed and, there are some great pictures, and that was awesome.  We had the opening there–it was cold then, it was snowy even, and we had hot cider and stuff and people showed up and were talking, what is this guy doing with the bridge?  And it just spurred discussion.  Just a reason to talk to people, really.

And then afterward, all the material was reused. [That story is in this blog post.]

installation, Passage, St. Peter