Adding Lights & Poking Holes

Half of my work in July has been spent reclaiming space needed for new work, as our outdoor trash-art gallery has finite space and is rapidly filling. This necessitated a substantial amount of work organizing and clearing our "deal with it later" pile: a growing mess at the rear of the lot with broken tools, defunct lawn furniture, weed cuttings, refuse from the previous occupants -- mainly hundreds of glass bottles -- and raw materials for future creations. While I'm still cleaning the corner, our mosquito problem has cleared up, and we've already gained enough room to add the Back Forty Fence.

[below] Back Forty Fence at 6:30 pm

The other half of my time in July has been spent initiating Stage Two of the gARTen plan: adding and weatherizing a variety of UV LED-lighting devices.

[below] Back Forty Fence at 7:30 pm - lights on!

[below] Back Forty Fence at 8:30 pm - wall washer on!

This includes a trio of three-LED spotlights inside Tropicana bottles, a 'wall washer' twelve-LED, bottle-enclosed spotlight and a changing color Magic Light LED within a Tropicana bottle, and three 16-foot LED strips inside bottle chains.

[below] Adding a second 16-foot LED strip inside bottle chain

[below] Back Forty Fence at 7:30 pm - lights on!

[below] Front gate at 7:30 pm - spotlight on!

[below] Back Forty Fence wall washer at 7:30 pm

[below] Jeep spotlight #1

The idea behind the gARTen's bottle chains has evolved from the original concept of stringing bottles onto a luminous rope which would glow under black light, to one where the black light is strung within the bottles, right along with the connective rope or tubing. This helps protect the UV LED lighting strips inside the plastic bottles, while simultaneously creating a luminous 'necklace' to beautify the gARTen @ 713 Cookman. Every time I can cobble together the requisite dollars from our donations I add another string. Below is the latest bottle chain loaded with an LED strip, & an additional strip still on its reel awaiting a bottle chain of its own.

One issue we experienced during the heavy downpours at Art All Night 2017 in Trenton was that the bottle chains, despite the angle of the bottles, rapidly filled with water. Although the LED strip is water resistant the increased weight snapped the clear tubing that I had it mounted in, breaking the bottle chain mounted on our Magic Tent. I forgot about this problem until the heavy rains we just had, and sure enough when I checked I found the gARTen Bridge had several bottles with water inside. So the next chains will be pre-poked, but this one had to be done in site using a heated awl point.

[below] Bottle chain problem: time to poke drainage holes

[below] Draining bottle chain on gARTen Bridge: