I promised a few months ago that I'd write a post to share my first public art project - sorry for the wait.
I was lucky enough to be chosen last February to create one of the public art installations for the new Gilson Middle School in Valdez. As wonderful as I may think I am, I suspect the main reason my project was chosen was because I proposed to work with the middle school students and staff to create the component parts: colorful fused-glass salmon. I'm quite certain the decision wasn't based
on my marker-and-colored-pencil proposal drawings! One of these years I need to learn how to use some sort of design software that will allow me to produce professional project proposals. The real key to making my proposal clear was that Thane and I built a prototype of the project. We figured that even if I didn't get a project commission, at least we'd have a great piece of art for our living room.
Last April and May we made salmon. I had enough leave time available to be able to take a few hours a day off from my "real" job to get the majority of the glass work done. Three days a week for four weeks I spent two hours in the morning cutting out salmon on my diamond ring saw, and then in the afternoon I'd spend an hour or so at the school working with groups of 12 to decorate the salmon.
I took all the supplies I need to the school for the students and staff to decorate their fish. They each got to choose a base color, and then used scrap glass, stringers, frit, millefiori, and dichroic glass I brought with me to decorate them. I put no restrictions on their creativity other than that they couldn't alter the base shape of the salmon (no turning them into sharks), had to have an eye and a mouth (although a few ended up blind or mute), and couldn't use copyrighted logos. I taught them how to use tile nippers to cut glass into approximately the shapes they wanted, and they learned a bit about the different forms glass comes in. It was interesting to watch both kids and adults work. Some people really got into the project and carefully chose and placed each piece of glass. Others couldn't have cared less and just threw a few pieces down because Mrs. Franciosi insisted everyone make one. Even a few of the teachers grumbled and were as bad natured about it as some of the kids. (All males regardless of age. Hmm.) The final rule they had was that all the pieces of glass had to be glued down with Elmer's glue so that I could get them home to my kiln without them falling apart. Once back to my studio, I could fire 12 at a time in my wonderful new Paragon kiln. I used this project as an excuse to buy the big kiln I'd been wanting anyway.
Once the fun part of making the fish was done, I still had to get the stainless steel support structures made. This part of the project was supposed to be Thane's, but before we knew it it was fishing season, so I ended up doing more than I planned. He still did a ton, though, because each fish has a little cone-shaped aluminum disc glued to the back that's then attached to a stainless rod which is welded to the stainless tubing wave. The waves have 1-inch legs made out of the same stainless tubing which then mount to discs that screw to the wall. This is all very hard to describe in words, but what it boils down to is that he hand-machined over 200 little parts on his lathe, drilled hundreds of holes on the drill press, and cut and shaped 44 little legs. I ended up bending the waves, tapping holes for set screws, grinding lots of parts to shape, and making the posts the fish stick out from the waves on. I spent quality time with the lathe, chop saw, grinder, drill press, pipe bender, and tapping tools. Happily, I was saved from teaching myself to weld via YouTube videos by a friend who generously donated his time to do all the welding at the last minute. The photos below all show parts of the process of making the 22 waves that displayed the final school of salmon.
Before I knew it, it was mid-July and time to install the project at the school. I was petrified. I'm a very fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants artist. I get a mental image of what I want, but I'm terrible at trying to draw what I envision the end product to be. As a result, I had no plan for how the 21 waves and 168 fish were going to go up on the walls. When push came to shove, Rowan and I hauled boxes of salmon and a pile of metal to the school. We laid the waves out on a blue tarp and started randomly gluing the fish to the posts with JB Weld, a product I hoped would work. I still wasn't confident two days later when the time came to hang them on the walls.
Scott, a friend and one of the school maintenance staff, was kind enough to go up in the manlift and actually screw the waves to the walls. He was very patient, and we worked well together as I chose each fish-encrusted wave in turn and said, "Move it a little to the left. Now down two inches. Yeah, I think that will work." Once the first few were up we were able to establish a pattern, but it was still a matter of individually checking and adjusting each piece. As we moved from one wall to the next, I started to sweat about actually getting them all up there. It was starting to look like we might run out of room. Thank goodness we didn't, and the spacing ended up being wonderful. My mental vision of the school starting out wide and tapering down to the lead fish worked out well, and everyone got their fish displayed. Scott even let me know a couple of months after school started that the whole thing had survived the two good-sized earthquakes we had without any fish falling down. Yay! (I still check it every time I go into the school to make sure they're all still there.)
So, here are photos of the final result. The whole thing is about 35 feet long, and the school is about 6 feet high at the left end. The 21 waves are 5 feet long, and each fish is about 11 inches.
I thought it was going to be an awesome installation, but was still surprised to see how great it turned out. I regularly get reports that it's the highlight of the school. I'm simply thrilled to have had this opportunity to not only expand my repertoire, but to work with the students and staff to create public art that is a source of pride to them. I would definitely love to do another big project like this.
