Phase 3: Attaching the butterflies- day 1-7

On Tuesday, July 28th, I climbed up to my new home. The main cables are ready and more will be installed as the piece progresses. It's not possible to plan ahead as the whole process is very spontaneous. It was slightly overwhelming to look at this empty space and try to visualize how it's going to look at the end of one week, then another week and yet another.

At the end of the day there were enough elements attached that I could start to get a feel as to what lays ahead.

I've brought a fraction of the pieces. At night I'll go home and attach more wires and link more elements.Each day that passes accumulates more butterflies. It's as if they've actually flown into the space. The ambient air moves them.The light changes as the sun moves around the building but not much as no sun penetrates the space.
A moment of brilliance inspired me to call my friend George Hauptman, husband of Harumi Lanier-Hauptman, a very talented interior designer. George is very tall. He can touch an 8' ceiling. Standing on a ladder on scaffolding can be dangerous and as the floor of the scaffold is still 9' from the ceiling, George's help is critical. Here I have one hand gripping his pocket and the other on his ladder as he reaches to a far corner.
The end of the day on August 3rd, shows the movement of the butterflies with the air.

Two really nice young guys who are unpacking hundreds of boxes filled with thousands of books are visiting the space.

Phase 2: Making 2,000 butterflies

By the end of May, I'd made 1,000 ceramic butterflies and 1,000 fiberglass fabric butterflies. That's so many that I'm wondering what kind of person would actually do something like this. Remarkably, I find it quite soothing to make small repetitive elements. Each ceramic element has some kind of mark as do most of the fabric elements.

Next comes the wire phase when I attach wires to each element, sometimes linking them together.

On Monday, July 27th, the installer from Skyline Scaffolding arrived. It was a tight sqeeze to fit two 5x10' towers into the space between the benches. But it worked.

This will be my home for the next several weeks.

See the concept phase in the prior post below.