Last winter after Christmas, I bought up all the Christmas ornament hooks in Grandville; after I purchased 20,000 ornament hooks, Target, Meijer, and Michaels were cleaned out.
Meanwhile, several high school students from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo started folding the paper birds. I even mailed supplies to one student in Fresno, California. While at a restaurant, one of my girlfriends started talking to her waiter about my ArtPrize work. Surprisingly, the waiter offered to help fold paper cranes too. A few weeks later my girlfriend delivered 250 paper birds.
Although most of the birds were finished by July, the tedious work of hanging the birds on the nets still lay ahead. Time was bearing down; I wondered if I was going to be able to finish hanging all the paper birds before ArtPrize. Several girlfriends, their children, and friends of friends—people I didn’t even know—volunteered to help.
Without wasting any time, several friends gathered at my home. Some moms worked at a table stringing hundreds of birds; other moms and children hand tied the paper birds to nets.
A few hours later, we had to stop and form a back rub train to help ease our aching muscles. After about six hours of non-stop working, we all realized that a lot more effort was needed to fill all ten sections of netting. So we decided to meet again.
Another friend gathered a group of children to string several hundred birds to double up our efforts at her house. One dad ended up sitting down with his kids to help. A grandmother even offered to babysit to help the process flow more smoothly.
Several days later when all the birds were finally hung on the nets, exhausted moms and kids cheered. Though tired, we all felt a strong sense of community like the old quilting bees or Amish barn-raising events.
The children may have worked harder than the adults, but better yet, the intergenerational bonds of friendship had strengthened. Everyone felt excited to be a part of ArtPrize. That my friends wanted to help me succeed and be a part of the artistic process moved me deeply. In the end, thirty volunteers worked 630 hours to help Wing and a Prayer take flight.
