The fifth and last piece of the lower mountain is now mudded and will be cured enough for paint on Monday. The pressure is on to get all of the lower pieces painted by end of business on Wednesday because the crane truck arrives at the shop on Thursday to begin bringing the pieces up to the lake for assembly.
Bridge adventure
I believe that to be a good artist/designer I need to first fill my head with plenty of images and ideas. This means lots of field trips. Each summer season Phoebe and I do a variety of fun adventures in search of new things and places to explore. Today was the first adventure of 2015. We decided to go up the Fraser Canyon as far as Hell's Gate.
Unfortunately the airtram was still closed for a couple more weeks so we had to look for a alternate adventure. As we drove I spotted the old Alexandra Bridge far down in the canyon. It had been built in 1926 and used until 1964. I had caught brief glimpses of it many times previously as I drove up the canyon but today we would take time to search it out. We found a likely turnoff from the main road and slowly made our way down a bumpy road through a thick forest towards the river until we could go no further with the truck. Then it was time for a ten minute hike.
As we cleared the trees we got our first good close look at the bridge. It was SPECTACULAR!
The bridge was definitely looking it's age but structurally was sound. The bridge deck was of a design that allowed us to see down to the river and rocks far below. It took a while before Phoebe would walk by herself without clinging tightly to my hand but once she decided it was safe the fear evaporated.
The four cables holding up each side of the bridge were huge!
It's a BLAST
It is great fun to get an idea, whip up a concept and then watch as the idea becomes real and fully developed. In our studio I purposely keep the designs loose with the goal of making them better as they get built. Our clients thankfully go along with this approach.
One of our current projects is the sign for BLASTING BARRELS, a spinning coaster. The car design is a barrel which travels on a figure eight track and spins all of the way around. I designed the sign some months ago. This week we finally got to start the production of the sign. I designed the file, routed the pieces and assembled the sign while Peter began welding up the framework.
The original design called for a stack of three barrels but as we started fitting things up it begged to be taller so another barrel was added to the top of the stack. We'll slide in a few sticks of dynamite on the upper barrels just for fun.
Stay tuned to watch this fun project come together in the next couple of weeks.