Save A City

Save A City, Text on Ice by Broken City Lab, February 3, 2009

At Windsor’s riverfront, SAVE A CITY, installed this afternoon. We opted out of using monofilament to hang the blocks of ice because there was a nice snowbank already there, and probably the last thing the Detroit River needs is more garbage in it. I’ll post some photos of the process of making these soon (definitely before the weather gets too warm).

12 Replies to “Save A City”

  1. looks beautiful. i can’t wait till spring though when it will be easier to get around and do more creative things. glad i could help out tonight for once too instead of just taking photos.

    1. thanks Darren, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out too. also glad you got in on some soldering… it’s awesome to see so much activity happening!

  2. Wonderful. I hope you’ll be visiting and photographing the piece over the weekend as the weather warms up and then freezes again. It’ll be interesting to see the words disappear as the ice becomes cloudy and then reappear again as it refreezes.

    It wouldn’t be invisible, but for times when the ice needs to be tied on, jute or sisal would at least be biodegradable. Perhaps it could be frozen right into the back of the block so that it doesn’t show on the front? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all of those millions of plastic zip ties that are used once and discarded.

    1. Oohhhh, really good idea with using something biodegradable. We’ve tried to brainstorm before ways to embed a material into the ice as it freezes to make it easier to hang. Because of the silicon tray it freezes in, It’s tough to get anything deeply embedded like that… but I think it could probably work to slowly layer ice on the back, with something like jute or sisal below it, so that it doesn’t have to be in there from the beginning, but can be added later.

      I’ll be out of town this weekend, but if anyone is down by the river, this is around Askin, or maybe a little east of that, let me know how it holds up.

    1. I might try to check it out tomorrow… with my fingers crossed. It likely won’t last the weekend, it’s going to be above freezing, right?

      I’d like to do more of this, but not sure if it’s going to dip below freezing for a long enough time in the next few weeks to make it worthwhile…

Comments are closed.