By Justin on February 9th, 2009, 12:29 am 4 Comments

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been working on making blocks of ice with letters and text embedded in them to create temporary street art. I think this idea came out of working with wheat paste, realizing the enjoyment of working in public spaces, and wanting to continue to work throughout the winter.

I liked developing and working on this project for a number of reasons—especially the durational experience of freezing a number of blocks of ice, cutting out the paper letters, then slowly covering those letters with thin layers of ice, eventually securely embedding them into the blocks.

After the jump, there are some step-by-step photos and documentation of our learning process.

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Tagged: BCL how to ice research text

By Justin on February 3rd, 2009, 5:45 pm 12 Comments

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).

Tagged: BCL fence ice research river text

By Justin on January 6th, 2009, 6:52 pm 4 Comments

Another iteration of our Text On Ice series, this time spelling out, “Let’s Be Friends” and mounted on a fence bordering the Forster Secondary School‘s field.

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Tagged: BCL fence ice research text

By Justin on January 1st, 2009, 8:21 pm 0 Comments

I just got back from out of town, I’m exhausted, having spent the last few days in northern Michigan (I forgot what it’s like to have real winter, it was nice). I pulled this out of the freezer, having nearly forgotten I had finished it, I had some difficulty freezing this one, mostly because I was trying to do so outside right when things were beginning to thaw.

I’m really looking forward to 2009—so many things to do and many more ideas to come. Posts should start up regularly again in the next day or so.

Tagged: BCL ice Michigan text website

By Justin on December 23rd, 2008, 7:27 pm 6 Comments

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks developing this project, and somehow waited until the coldest night yet to install the first successful Text On Ice (You Changed Everything) project. I’ll post some more details on the (ongoing) process later this week, but wanted to get this image up first.

This first iteration of the project is mounted via monofilament line, basically just tied to the fence. The plan is to embed the line into the ice on future versions of the project. The text will also change from work to work. 

Considering how cold it is this year in Windsor, it’s actually a good time to do this project, as it likely won’t melt for a while.

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Tagged: BCL fence ice research text

By Josh on December 21st, 2008, 4:04 pm 3 Comments

“Art Shanty Projects is an artist driven temporary community exploring the ways in which the relatively unregulated public space of the frozen lake can be used as a new and challenging artistic environment to expand notions of what art can be.”

As you can see, they have experimented with ice lettering in a more permanent fashion.  These are more like ice gravestones, aside from the text.  I think ours could be more thoughtful, but it’s nice to see examples of something we’d like to accomplish.

It’s also an interesting idea to create an artistic community for a set period of time in a temporary natural setting.

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Tagged: context ice lake shanty

By Michelle on November 3rd, 2008, 9:04 pm 0 Comments

In honour of the 79th anniversary of Black Tuesday (the day the U.S. stock market crashed), artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese installed this ice sculpture of the word ECONOMY in front of the New York Supreme Court building on October 29th. Over a period of several hours, the sculpture melted completely. The artists interviewed viewers on-site and also took time-lapsed photographs as well as video of the project.

Go Here for more information on this project!

 This piece is almost too perfect. We have been throwing around many ideas for upcoming winter projects with ice, and I somewhat wish we had thought of this first! It fits all too well with the current situation Windsor finds itself in, and what we, as artists, are trying to accomplish in the city. We can definitely learn a lot from this project.

Tagged: economy ice melt perfect winter