Bells

Bell Bonanza

Last Thursday and Friday I was helping out Lead Pencil Studio take down their temporary bell instillation at Seattle Center. I also helped to give away all the bells on those days as well. People were going crazy over these bells, some really crazy. We had a whole bunch of people give us great complements and thanks for the bells being there over the summer. Some people said they changed the way they walk to work just to pass through their to hear them. Almost every one was sad to see it taken down and wondered if it would happen again next year. We had hung around 1200 bells in the trees and I think we ended taking down and giving away around 800-900 because there were quite a few that went missing throughout the summer either from falling or the biggest loss was from theft from people climbing up in the trees and snagging one for themselves. When we started giving them away we put two bells in a bag but quickly went through 300 bells in a hour so we started giving one away. It seems though that every one has a sister or co-worker that just could not make it down to grab a bell and wondered if they could have two. On the first day had some repeat bell grabbers, one lady in particular came back three times and changed coats or umbrellas each time. I guess it's great that some people were so enthralled by this show and it's not often that you get to take a little piece of the art home with you when a show if over. The second day of the giveaway was much lighter and we did have a few repeat bell grabbers from the day before but a lot of people who grabbed bells that day were people that were just happening to walk through. We ended up with a few extras at the end of the day but over all the giveaway was really successful and it was nice to hear all the great feed back and support and hope for more temporary public shows like this in the future.

The Queen Ann View posted about the give away here, which also links to more info about the show.

Here is the video I put together of the bells.



Here are pictures of making the bells and installing them.