The Letters are Done Phase 2!!!

We did it. With a lot of help, we plowed through the remaining eight letters, finishing the papier maché part of the process towards completing our ongoing large-cardboard letters project. On Friday night, we had ten people around the table, including our dear Cristina for a short while, and it was great!!!

Next on the to-do list — get some test paint on some cardboard and start planning how to finish the construction phase of the project.

Since we’ve only been able to get through two or three letters in past weeks, I started off with bringing five letters over, thinking the completion of even those would be ambitious for nine or ten people.

However, we had a lot of extra help — Thom Provost and Karlyn Koeser — along with Hiba, and Kevin.

And, a lovely surprise, Cristina dropped in for a little while and immediately got her hands dirty. She’s been making a few trips from Toronto every now and again, but our Friday meeting times haven’t worked out for her schedule. We miss her.

It was going pretty fast. We had quickly discovered that the glossy newsprint in some ads didn’t work so well, so we made sure to just use matte newspaper.

Thom, currently training as an architect, appropriately payed some particular attention to the structural integrity of the edging of our letters.

We had moved back to the Ecohouse to accomodate the extra people we had helping.

Some letters went faster than others, even with extra hands.

Karlyn, Thom, and Michelle tackling the letter K.

Hiba and Kevin on the letter S.

Cristina, Josh, and Rosina on the letter A.

Cristina working on the A.

Thom taking care of the K.

Rosina getting to the hidden edges of the A.

Thom and Karlyn getting to the tough angles on the K.

Karlyn and Michelle finishing up the K.

We’re only doing one layer of the papier maché, so we’ll be counting on a few layers of paint to create a good surface. We figure a few coats of thick primer and then a coat or two of the red paint should do it. We’ll then have to sort out how best to apply the retroreflective glass beads we were working with last week.

Cristina helping Kevin and Hiba finish the underside of the S.

Things went so fast, I doubled back and got the remaining three letters — Kevin and Hiba took on H.

Josh reaching to the edge of the letter E.

We were working around the big table at Ecohouse.

Cristina enjoying a cookie, courtesy of Arts Council Windsor & Region before she had to leave for the night.

Two Es on the table.

Rosina taking care of the bottom edge of E. Her hands were destroyed by the end of the night.

And … VICTORY!!! All the lettes are done being papier machéd now! This week, we might start painting, well, the primer anyways. We’ve also started talking about how we’ll actually be working to install this project — it’s going to be fun, we’ll ask for your help.