Public Art for the Broadway Bridge in Portland, OR:
Greetings to bridge, public art and yarn lovers! My name is Tyler Mackie, and I am a fiber artist, living and practicing art in Portland, OR. Bridge For Blankets is a community-based knit project, and temporary, public art installation, set for install on the Broadway Bridge in August, part of the 2013 PDX Bridge Festival. 2013 is the Centennial Anniversary for the Broadway Bridge, and Bridge For Blankets is my way of drawing focus to this historical structure’s role in the Portland community.
This public art installation consists of 4 -18’ x 21’ knit banners hung outside the drawspans, on both the North and South sides of the Broadway Bridge. The construction of these banners will depend upon the generous support of 40+ volunteer knitters, local mainly to the Portland area. After the project has been taken back down, these knit banners will be washed and broken down into 42 - 6’ x 6’ afghans, and donated to Portland area homeless shelters.
Who is Helping Us?
Multnomah County is lending us their skilled and expert engineers, those that manage and care for the Broadway Bridge, to help Bridge For Blankets go up on the Broadway for the month of August. We are very grateful for their enthusiastic support of this multi-purpose art installation, and can’t wait to see the banners brightening up points on the iconic, brick-red bridge. We still need help raising the funds for installation materials and equipment rental, and that is one of the reasons that we are campaigning for your support on Indiegogo.
The knit banners will all be constructed from a colorful array of Cascade 220 Superwash Wool – a wool that will not felt, allowing the homeless shelter recipients to wash these blankets just as they would any other blanket. Abundant Yarns (http://www.abundant-yarn.com) and Cascade Yarns (http://www.cascadeyarns.com/) have teamed together to offer us a significant discount on the wool we need to for the project, and for that, we are delighted beyond belief. However, just as with the installation costs, we need your assistance to pay for the large yarn order. It is more expensive to create an afghan from quality natural fibers, but we believe that this makes the resulting charitable gesture more meaningful and heartfelt.
In order to get the word out about this exciting project, we will need to hire a graphic designer to arrange the message into beautiful, graphic imagery, as a printing and web management budget to help share those images and information with bridge, art and knit lovers all over the Pacific Northwest. We need your help to make sure these services can be provided for public awareness.
How You Can Help:
We invite you to show your support and enthusiasm for what we are doing for the Portland community, and donate generously to Bridge For Blankets on this page.
UPDATE: We have all the knitting volunteers that we require for this project.
