2008 da Vinci Days Mandala Project

The Project

Every year da Vinci Days, here in Corvallis, celebrates the creative spirit by allowing the community at large to create public art for the "Avenue of Imagination" and with a designated theme. This year the theme was "Unidentified Flying Art". My husband, Gerry, and I usually participate. This year we made a rocket ship and had 58 mandalas hanging from it to create the illusion that the rocket is flying through a mandala cloud.

In the past, the tube was used as a pencil and an Egyptian column.

How We Did It

1. At last 25 friends and patrons of The Mandala Lady, colored the Stargazer mandala or made up their own version of the Stargazer mandala. It was wonderful to see all of the different creations.
2. We glued fishing line and the mandala to the label side of old CD's & DVD's so that the shiny, rainbow side became the back of each mandala.
3. Gerry bought 4' dowels, cut them in half and drilled 20 holes, 10 on the top row and 10 in the middle.
4. We then tied the mandalas at varying lengths to the dowels, averaging about 3 mandalas per dowel.
5. To avoid or minimizing anyone poking their eyes out by getting to close to the structure, we put poofy balls of aluminum foil at the ends of each dowel. When it was done we decided that we would call these asteroids belts.
6. When it was all together it looked very cool!

The Crisis

Once the Stargazer was first set up, it looked great and the mandalas were swaying and rotating in the breeze. The sun was shimmering off the backs of the mandalas. It was very shiny and very pretty.

Ok...so we learned a couple of very valuable lessons.

1. Check the weather report
2. Use heavier fishing line
3. Drill holes into CD's rather than taping/glueing fishing line
4. Cut the fishing line shorter

It was a very windy weekend. So between the wind, the light fishing line being cut long, and being taped/glued to the cd's...the entire Stargazer display was a disaster by 7 pm on Friday. The lines were all tangled. Some of the lines were so tangled the lines snapped and the mandala cd's went flying; half the mandalas were on the ground. I was heartbroken. All that work.

At 8pm, we picked up all the mandalas that were on the ground and decided to go to da Vinci Days concert anyway with the idea of repairing the CD's when we went home. After the concert, we found about 8 more mandalas on the ground. Insult to injury!

At 11pm, we were home and Gerry pulled out drill and started drilling holes in the CD's. I grabbed some 30lb fishing line and re-strung each one.

The next morning we were up at 6:30 am and went to the display. The first thing Gerry realized was that the drill he set out was missing. I then remembered seeing the drill on top of the car when it was still in the driveway. I also recalled hearing some odd noises when we were on the road. Our best guess is that it flew off the car as we made a sharp turn. We are forever learning the "be in the now" lesson.

Gerry went back home, retraced his steps...the drill was gone. Fortunately he had another one and was careful about where he put this one.

While he was gone, I cut down all the mandalas and all the fishing lines. The ones we prepped the night before, I started hanging...this time I hung them shorter to avoid nasty entanglements. When Gerry came back, in assembly-line order, Gerry drilled and tied lines, I hung mandalas. To be honest, it actually looked better with the shorter lines...it looked more like a cloud of mandalas.

Throughout the weekend we saw lots of people admiring Stargazer and taking pictures. I put up a sign that explained how this was a community project. People really appreciated that so many people were involved in making this happen.

During the week after da Vinci Days, we put up the display in the lobby of my shop. Since it was so wide, we had to remove the dowels on the back side.

Sadly during the winter for 2008/2009, the stargazer rocket disintegrated while on display in our yard. It hung in there for quite awhile. Now I need to find another use for the CD's we used in this project.

Check out the 2009 Avenue of Imagination Community Art Project