The Long Beach Fencing Club’s winning concept for the Design a Fence contest is streetwise, inexpensive, and flexible. The use of wheat paste is also brilliant because it flips a medium that is best known for illegal advertising, revolutionary politics, and street art. What has become synonymous for rebellious expression on someone else’s wall is shockingly used to promote the building behind it.
But I’m just projecting. Here’s what the club has to say on the heels of Friday’s judge-pleasing presentation:
PT: How did the idea of wheat paste come up? Was it arrived at quickly or was there an evolution of ideas?
LBFC: We landed on the idea of wheat paste after brainstorming cost-effective ways to cover large surfaces and walls. Spray paint and rollers also came to mind, but the wheat paste solution seemed to work well with our modular time line concept. It’s easy to envision one time line “post” on one wheat pasted poster. It was sort of an evolution of ideas, but we arrived at it very quickly.
PT: Can you talk a little about the medium and why it’s so appropriate?
LBFC: We figured that when it comes to covering large surfaces quickly, what works for street artists will probably work just as well for us. Using posters and wheat paste is an easy way for an artist to make a big impact without taking all day about it, and it should be more cost effective (not to mention safer) than spray paint. Because it’s cheap and easy to get content up via wheat paste, we think that also graffiti-proofs the fence to an extent. Time will tell!
PT: What are some of the things that you will be pasting up?
LBFC: Well, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the possibilities. It will definitely incorporate some of the following elements: Long Beach history, Psychic Temple history, iT related content, comments and feedback from the community, Long Beach-inspired art and photography from local artists and creatives, features on our brand partners, and so on.
PT: Are you ready to get your hands dirty?
LBFC: It’s very generous of you to assume we came in here with clean hands. How do you know our hands aren’t already dirty? Are we ready to get this awesome fence project rolling? I think the answer is a resounding yes.
