Fence Art?

I don't usually have a lot of what I would call crazy ideas.  But every once in a while I wonder what I get myself into.

Recently, I did some "fence art" for the construction site for Jack's Urban Meeting Place downtown (JUMP).   I did it with permission, in case you were wondering.

Another artist that was in a Public Art workshop I was taking said that the organizers for JUMP were looking for some way to spiff up the construction site fence (because the project won't be completed until sometime in 2014 or 2015).  She had painted some of the fencing material for them, but they were looking for more artists to do something.  I thought I could stitch on the fencing material.

First, I went and looked at the material.  It was fabric-like, although plastic-y.  But I went ahead and contacted the people at JUMP and told them my idea.  They said they couldn't pay me for my time (which I already knew) but they would cover the materials cost and post photos and a link to my website on their Facebook page.

My idea was to do some simple stitched design with yarn.  Since I wasn't getting paid I didn't want to do something too elaborate that would take a lot of time.  I also worried about the yarn shredding as it was pulled through the material or if it would even be seen once finished.

I had to lay out the material on my driveway to work on it.  Here are some progression photos.

 The material had some dirty spots on it that I attempted to wash off first.

And here are some photos of it on site.  It is very subtle and hard to see as you are driving by, but pedestrians can see it.  I didn't know until I tried if I would work.  Seeing it up, I think I could have stitched another line right next to the first to make it thicker, but it took me about a day and a half just to do this much.

Yep, hard to see! But I think it is better than plain fencing material.  Now I know if I want to sew on construction fencing material again, I need to use a different technique/material.