Ms. Lane’s 2nd grade class at Timberlin Creek Elementary in St. John’s Country provided 110 messages in bottles that we just posted to the site. We enjoyed going through the very thoughtful drawings and words. A few gave us a big smile! I hope that the children can challenge all of the adults out there to turn in bottles. Kids are amazing.
Today we emailed to the press a description of our project. You can view it here: Nov 9 – Message in a Bottle News Release. It was a little scary hitting the “send” button knowing that your document will be sent to a few hundred people. Amy Crane of the Cultural Council wrote the release…thank you Amy! This is all part of the formula for getting the word out. It also helps you refine your message. Hopefully you’ll start seeing some news of the project in the media.
Many thanks to Mike and Carolyn at the Sir Speedy Downtown location on Beaver Street for providing our business cards. We have actually been using this printer for many years (like over 30) when we first started our business. Great service, friendly, fast, and reasonable. Please patronize our sponsors if you can. Thanks Mike and Carolyn!
If you need some business cards to hand out please drop by to get some, or you can print your own (go to How to Help, under Resources there is a link to a PDF file with cards). Here is what they look like. Spread the word.
Today we almost froze at the Veg Fest, but we kept busy in the Arbus tent. Thanks to Dorian’s hard work and salesmanship, we collected over 70 messages and signed up 12 volunteers. We met a lot of wonderful people, many whose spouses were in Afghanistan and a few veterans. They were appreciative of the project. We are still wondering about our ability to get enough bottles and messages to make this a success. We’ve got a long way to go. If you can help, please step up!
We set up a test group at St. Joseph’s Catholic School a few weeks ago and they came through in a very BIG way. 540 bottles and messages! A big thanks goes out to Judy Toth, our very good friend and a very wonderful teacher at the school, for organizing a school-wide effort. You will be the model school for the project and a goal for everyone else to reach and try to exceed. We’re excited and grateful.
Thanks to all who came by to see us during Art Walk last night. Traffic in the gallery was very light, but we collected 55 messages from everyone who came to visit and signed up a few Messengers. There still seems to be some confusion on this being a recycling project or whether we want empty bottles. The important part of this project is the message. It is what you have to say. We are asking for 5 separate words, not a sentence or phrase, that describe your sentiment to our troops. And then for you to place this message in a bottle that you obtain.
Some people asked if they could email the message to us and if we could then print and insert their words into a bottle for them. I think it is important that to participate, one has to take the time to obtain an empty, dry bottle. If it’s not worth the effort to get a water bottle, then I guess this isn’t for you.
We still want and need clean empty bottles. When we attend events, it’s always good to have bottles handy for people to use. But here is the deal: if we give you a bottle, you have to promise to tell at least 5 people about this project AND bring us back at least 5 bottles with messages. That’s fair, isn’t it?
This Saturday I will be at Riverside Park at the NE FL Veg Fest in the Arbus tent. No fried pork rinds or beef jerky here, but lots of healthy foods and some fun displays. Drop by to say hi if you can.
We are getting ready for Art Walk tonight. If you are coming out please stop by the studio at 121 W. Forsyth to take a look at the test wall and to make a bottle. We will have plenty on hand, or better yet bring your own. If you would like to volunteer to help, we’ll painlessly sign you up. Right now we need people to help spread the word to their own groups at companies, churches, schools, and organizations. If you would like to get involved we’d love to hear from you. We also have lots of support materials and handouts available. Hope to see you tonight!
I decided to go live today, November 1. We’ve received bottles from some of our test sites and I wanted to make a post to Facebook announcing our project. Tomorrow night is November Art Walk and we are having an opening at Studio 121 to show the test wall and model. I’m working on a small video to introduce the project. Let’s see how this project spreads.
We’re hoping to have a small opening for Art Walk this Wednesday night to show the test wall and model and to recruit some messengers. We will also have plenty of empty bottles and notes for visitors to write their messages. But the deal is, take a bottle, bring back 5 (or more!). We will probably do our first post on Facebook tomorrow. Keeping our fingers crossed that this project will take off.
I’ve been thinking about the wall model for quite some time, and had the planter bases constructed two weeks ago. Originally I wanted to represent each individual bottle with a piece of a drinking straw, that would end up being 0.6 inches long. We bought a box of 3000 from Costco and started cutting. What I ended up doing today is constructing a model using styrofoam insulation sheets, so I could just study the “massing” of the bottles in the planter, and to get an idea of the overall look of the wall. This was going to be a work in process, so I knew I needed something relatively easy to cut and assemble.
My initial design has the wall linear with a wave built into the top. There are three layers shown, with a total bottle count for this design of about 60,000. I hope we can reach at least this size for the wall. More bottles would translate into more layers, while keeping the total height at around 6 feet. Any higher I think I will be getting into some stability issues. The styrofoam was easy to work with especially with a hot wire cutter. Just my kind of material.
