Day 3 of our Extended Field Trip #001 in Peterborough at Artspace was filled with design, math, and construction. Having decided that the general sense of the city is that “everything is OK,” we moved forward on printing posters and building some text that will be on display for the opening Friday night.

We had many adventures in carpentry today and I think this is just the beginning of working on some more projects of this scale.

The day started with another walk around town to get our posters printed that also read, “Everything is OK.”

The river / creek that runs under the downtown has apparently caused some considerable damage due to flooding. Josh and I had thought it was quite amazing to walk between streets and have this water rushing through, but it hadn’t convinced us that a canal in Windsor is a great idea.

One way to deal with alleys—make them into thoroughfares.

This stretch is kind of an alley, with brickwork for the pathway and leading to a parking garage.

some more graffiti.

Where the creek comes out on the other side.

Custom Copy, recommended to us by Artspace to print our posters.

The test print.

The workstation.

The posters printed.

100 11×17 pages printed.

10 of each design.

Gradients and solids.

Diagrams for our letters.

Brainstorming notes.

Records of conversations—70% of the people you see downtown are residents of downtown.

Rows of chairs and our workspace.

The tape measure that came in very handy today.

Josh measuring.

And measuring some more and taking notes.

Back out of the basement, Josh crunching the numbers.

He figured out the length of wood we needed for each and every letter. At first we were thinking of making each letter 40″ high, which would have doubled our material needs.

Ultimately, we settled on letters 20″ high, which works out a lot better.

Nearing his final calculations.

Measuring the wall to make sure the text would all fit.

Back to the drawing board for a bit more then off to Home Depot.

Then off to Home Depot to buy an 85′ roll of Christmas Lights.

A quick sketch of our letter E.

Josh first tried staples to keep the letters together.

Ultimately though, we figured we needed to go with braces and screws.

Counting the braces for each letter and checking our math one last time.

Down in the basement after our first few cuts—we have the letter E and I.

Our tools.

Some more letters after progress.

The saw set up on a plexiglass case. I manned the saw for the most part, not trusting my mathematical side of my brain.

Josh working out the details for some of the more elaborate angles we would need for our letters.

In the sunlight working on the letter K.

Working above some of the squared off letters helped us with the angles on others.

The V was kind of tough to figure out at first.

This is the letter R waiting for its small angled leg.

Josh working on the bracing up until the minute our little town hall meeting began.

Our town hall meeting, trying to get to the bottom of what makes Peterborough work.

By the end of our conversation it seemed like we had figured out that it’s this kind of entrepreneurial spirit that spans beyond just business ventures that makes the community work well and generally band together.

Some of the results of the town hall meeting.

Things considered to be good about Peterborough.

More good, red is bad.

The public meeting and unified voice were big important ideas—things that need to be translated back to Windsor.

Leadership in the artistic community was also an important one.

Josh’s notes, always so much more legible.

A lot more legible and easier to link together.

Some of the bigger ideas.

After the town hall, back to work on the letters.

Iga and Josh set about bracing the letters.

The assembled letters thus far.

Iga inserting eyelets into the letters to mount them on the wall.

Josh working on bracing.

Bracing the Y – the Y was a real work of art on its own.

Iga working on the eyelets.

Levelling with a laser.

Some more text to play with, maybe tomorrow.

The leftovers.

Josh finalizing the laser line.

All the letters completed.

OK.

Josh on the ladder.

The E waiting to go up. As I type this, the letters are now all up, but we still need to mount the lights, so that photo will have to wait.

Tomorrow is the opening for our show, it should be awesome!!!