Friday, February 25, 2011

Making The Bees

The bees are two part urethane plastic.  We needed to know how much urethane was needed to fill the mold.  To do this, we gathered the clay from all the bees and placed it in a mixing bucket.  We then filled the bucket with water, making note of how much water we used.  We removed the clay and subtracted what was left from our original amount.  That measure was the total liquid we needed.  Dividing that in half gave us the amount for parts A and B for the plastic mixture.

Below, the clay in our bucket.


Here is the water level after we removed the clay.


Mixing equal parts A and B of the plastic.


Pouring our first test bees.
(notice the wire reinforcement for the wings)


Here we've suspended u-bolts into the mold.  The plastic will harden around them and give us a way to attach the bees to the fence.


Below you can see the plastic "kicking" or setting up.  


Taking the test bees out of the mold only 10 minutes after they were poured.


Our first batch of bees.


Every bee gets a clean-up around the edge.
(Notice the hardware embedded into the bee.)


Each bee gets primed and base coated with yellow.


BEES!

Monday, February 21, 2011

Bees!

The project has three major elements: bees, flowers and the planter area.
We'll start with the bees. We made a bee for each student at Garden City Early Learning Academy (GCELA).

First we started with a ball of plasticine clay.


We then sculpted the bees "in relief". This means that the bees stand out from the surface and are only one-sided.

Here is Becka creating one of the bees.


We created five bees for the project.


We built a box around the bees and poured rubber into it. When the rubber cures (hardens), we will remove the walls.


Here is our finished mold. There is an indentation that exactly matches each bee.

(Notice the wire pieces in the bee indentations? These will help reinforce the wings.)


Next we will pour plastic into the bee mold.



Thursday, February 17, 2011

A Call For Artists

Welcome to Watch The Garden Grow, a blog to follow the progress of The Gate Project, an Art in Public Places project.

This project started with a public call for artists. Interested artists submitted a proposal. A committee then chose the proposal that best fit the criteria put forth in the call for artists. We were so excited when we heard we were chosen.


Ginny and Becka

Here is our conceptual drawing for the project.

Click on image for larger view.

Follow our progress here at Watch The Garden Grow blog as we construct and install our permanent garden for Garden City Early Learning Academy.