As recommended by Jodi, I now have a respirator that specializes in protection against: paint & pesticide vapors, solvents, glue, thinners, particulates, and mists.
There’s still a ways to go with preparing the planters, but hopefully by next week we’ll be able to start planting.
In other news, an awesome brainstorming night with Cristina—so many great things being planned for the coming months!!!
A year ago today, the first post was made on BrokenCityLab.org – Broken City Lab is Alive.
Last night, Josh and I went for a walk and we thought, for a moment, we were in a real city. On our walk, we saw that there were people out walking, riding bicycles, enjoying the view alongside meadows and wildflower gardens, the downtown streets were shutdown and open to pedestrians to walk and sit outside of bars and restaurants without the traffic. For a few hours last night, the city didn’t seem quite so broken.
The post that I made a year ago had a picture that, for me, kind of summarized the general sense of the city for a lot of people. I’m not sure that anything has changed, and in all likelihood, things are worse than ever, but last night I had a feeling of hope for the city that I haven’t felt for a while.
Another day spent at 406 Pelissier. Working with these plastic bags is really time consuming, but it will be worth it. The projects we have in mind are taking longer than we may have initially aniticipated, but that’s been the case with everything we’ve ever done.
The banner is growing steadily, but we’re hoping for a final length of somewhere near 18 feet. We’ve also scouted a location, but we’re still working on the message for the banner itself.
Our continuing work with the planters is going well, as we’re about 1/3 of the way to the grand total of planters we’re hoping to make. Also, the test planter is doing well, with some wildflower seeds sprouting already. With the planter being indoors, it has certainly helped to keep the soil moist, but also (and as we had figured long ago), the first and second design iterations of the planters were drying the soil very quickly due to the use of newspapers. With the plastic bags, the soil seems to be holding moisture much better. We’ve been careful to create drainage holes, but we probably need to integrate this into the design more effectively.
Continue reading “Working on a Process: Plastic Bag Banners and Such”
Another great day in 406 Pelissier. We got lots of brainstorming done and continued our planning and work with plastic bag recycling projects.
It’s been a fantastic three days, and being able to work in such a concentrated way in just one week has been really helpful in pushing forward on some new ideas. We came up with a good plan for some “must do” things over the next few months, more details soon!
Today was another great, amazingly fun and productive day in 406 Pelissier! We did a lot of material tests, figured out some more details on our book, met some new people, and generally enjoyed having a dedicated workspace.
It’s going to be very hard to give up this space.
Now that Intersession is done, we’ve finally been able to put that downtown space to some use. Cristina and I spent the better part of the day in the space, using it basically as an office, but we’ll be there at least one more day this week and potentially one day on the weekend picking up where we left off on some older projects and inevitably starting some new ones.
On today’s agenda: see the new hybrid buses and look for some Text In-Transit signs (which we found), set up a small work area in the space, make some preliminary decisions about our book so we can get started on it, and photograph a new research site.
Also, we’re looking for any biodegradable plastic bags you may have (hint: Bulk Barn gives out biodegradable bags) for another project. If you have any, please drop them off at 406 Pelissier. We’ll be there Tuesday from 12noon until around 4pm.
This morning, on one of Transit Windsor’s new hybrid buses, we saw one of the nearly 100 Text In-Transit panels (this is the first panel on this new bus, as far as we could tell anyways). I believe they will all be installed on Transit Windsor’s entire fleet in the coming days.
Let us know if you see one (and try to take a picture)!
The panel above was submitted by Ross Moncur.
Last night was the opening for a couple of shows connected to the Parking Garage on the corner of Pelissier and Park, including our project, Broken City Lab: A Consultancy. Danielle, Steven, Leesa, and I spent the better part of the afternoon (attempting to dodge the rain) in the space setting up. Along with this wall, Steven set up a Floridian Embassy, and Leesa had a huge number of balloons pushed up against one of the windows and surrounding a small stage.
The work that went into this basically occurred over the last 48 hours. Danielle and I spent Wednesday night drawing, painting, printing, cutting, and gluing, and then Thursday in the space. Thanks to Steven’s bulletin, we had a general idea of how to organize the space, but it was really amazing to spend such a concentrated amount of time working in this way alongside Danielle, Steven and Leesa.
Our projects generally get drawn out, just due to the sheer complexities, unknowns, or relationships that need to be developed to pull them off. In this case, we had the space, we had a rough idea, and we had the support to make it happen.
We’ll plan to be in and out of the space as much as possible over the coming weeks, hopefully adding to the wall, going deeper into brainstorming on the potentials for the entire buildings, as well as just shifting to conduct our general research in the space.
I’ll get some more photos in the daylight soon. In the meantime, you can read a quick one-page statement on the project.
Danielle and I spent a number of hours last night going through photos of the Parking Garage and starting to imagine new treatments for the infrastructure, space, signage, walls, and streetscape.
We’ll be heading down early this afternoon to start getting all of this visual research up on the walls, with the opening tonight at 8pm, which also features projects from Julie Sando’s Contemporary Visual Culture class in the storefront at 424 Pelissier.
Lots of stuff to hang, plus there will be more throughout the month, as the project continues until June 28th.
We’ll be taking over 406 Pelissier from June 8th-28th and setting up a consultancy to research, investigate, and imagine alternative uses for the entire parking structure located at the corner of Park and Pelissier. Invented studies, statistics, and illustrations will be exhibited and will result in a formal report / action plan for future initiatives in Windsor’s downtown core.
Along with Julie Sando’s Contemporary Visual Culture class show, CVC Citizen Show (running at 424 Pelissier), we’ll have a reception of sorts on June 11th, from 8-11pm in both spaces.
We’ll be working in the space (406 Pelissier) off and on throughout the month.