Yesterday's lesson: test what you are doing before you do it 60 times. I am preparing for the Flying Horse Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit at the Pimgree School in South Hamilton, MA. I will be hanging strips with lines from Emily Dickinson on four trees. My son took this photograph in the spring when we did a test run for a photo for the catalog. I had tied the strips to the trees. He made the brilliant suggestion that instead of tying each one (there will about 80) to a branch, I attach rings to each strip which can then be tie wrapped to the tree. This will make the installation and take down so much easier.
The project is well underway and yesterday I decided to make a test it with tie wraps. I hung one of the early ones from a tree in the yardn and then one of the later ones.
The good news is I decided the beads and wire at the top were not necessary. They barely show up when viewed on the tree. The less good news was that I changed the way I was knotting on the ring after the first one and I realized I prefered the first and only one to the rest. It seems like a little detail but the strip moved better in the breeze with that style of knotting. So I will be finishing up the undone pile and taking the rest apart and redoing them.
It seems like a lot of work for a small detail but this is about the kind of perfection I think is worth pursuing: "exactly fitting the need in a certain situation or for a certain purpose." It is about rightness and harmony. I do it willingly. But I will test things out at the beginning next time.
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