Ellen’s Work Blog
November 2021
In October, as leaves started to fall and temps dropped a bit, I began to think about the big job still looming: getting artwork contributed by 10,000 kids up on the back ramp in the months ahead. This is really about creating a long (110 feet), narrow, three-dimensional display on two sides and above. Some of the collaborative projects have already been pulled together into one or more large pieces. A couple of these are major installation challenges. I would seriously disappoint the install crew if they could not come back to figure out a few impossible lifts and stabilization issues. Problem solving on a giant scale is their thing. When a new piece has “never-before-attempted” written all over it, this really gets them excited. My first step was asking John (Posey) and Justin (Truskauskas) to help me move the 26-foot-long helix down from our warehouse and into the mural building. Filthy dirty, it took a few days to clean and de-spider around every rivet and small corner. Originally created at Mark Grusauski’s Wingworks, this is a piece that required help from many people and many businesses, trucking giant pieces of Makrolon from Perotti Plumbing’s bender to Mark’s airplane hangar, where we finally had to hang it from the ceiling like a giant slinky in order to finish it.
And a story for next time: the hundreds of Japanese Americans who contributed pictures, memorabilia, and artwork in San Jose’s Japantown and Manzanar, California.
