Praeterita

I put together the accordion book for the Urbana public art project today. First, gluing the pages together: Then folding and standing the pages upright: Next, gluing the cover to bookboards, and stitching a ribbon to the spine: And finally, putting the pages and the cover together: This book will be placed on top of a bookshelf in a public area of the Urbana Free Library this coming Saturday.

Here is the simple model I made, using three of the final 15 pages, of the accordion book I am creating for the "In Urbana, I ..." public art project: All it took was something as simple as adding a gutter at the left side of each page to create the tab needed to glue the pages together.

It's been a long time in the making, but I am finally in the last stages of putting everything together for the public art project that I have been working on for the city of Urbana, Illinois. For details of the project, click here . Below is a photo showing all of the images of the participants holding the whiteboard, printed onto Lazertran, a waterslide decal that transfers to the plexiglass panels of the luminary: I flipped all the images first, so that I they will be on the inside of the luminary when it's assembled, facing outward but protected from curious fingers. I also printed a test page for the accordion book. The images will be printed along with each person's name, in alphabetical order, over a background watermark of Urbana's Market at the Square: Tomorrow, I start transferring the Lazertran images to the luminary panels. I will install the work in the Urbana Free Library next Saturday.

I ordered 150 postcards for my public art project in Urbana, Illinois, and they were waiting for me when I got back from Utah: The front has examples of endings to the statement "In Urbana, I ...". The back (not shown) has four simple instructions about how to participate. My plan is to make the first of a series of visits to Urbana soon, and hand out these cards to strangers on the streets.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I've just signed the contracts for a public art project that I was chosen for in the middle of this month. It's for the city of Urbana, Illinois, which is a small city (population 40,000) in the middle of the state. Most of the   University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a huge educational powerhouse, is housed within the Urbana city limits. Maybe that has something to do with its civic pride, and the fact that it has a vibrant public arts program. A curious fact is that in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey , it's mentioned that Hal, the killer computer, was programmed in Urbana, IL. The project that I submitted was a variation on the community memoir/luminary project that I did last year together with Patty. It's called 'IN URBANA, I ...', and the concept is this: I interview residents of on the street, and ask them to complete the sentence 'In Urbana, I ...' in any way that they choose -- for example, 'In Urbana I go to college,' '...