Pulling Together a Boat for Willimantic

Ted Efremoff and I collaborated on this project over the month of October, 2006. We set up an open workshop at the gallery at Artspace Windham, where Ted lives, in Willimantic, Connecticut. I grew up in the next town over, Coventry, and my parents still live in the area. We solicited the participation of anyone who wanted to join us in building an 18 foot wooden boat.


We were blessed with close to 100 participants throughout the 19 days of building. Both of us have experience working with wood, but neither had ever been involved in building a boat previously. We got some great advice and help from a few people who had done boat building. We also built a wooden cart to tow the boat over land, as it was meant to debut in a procession through the local street festival on October 19.


At the festival we were joined by a team of pullers, several of whom had worked with us eight or ten hours a day for the last week of the project, unpaid, just enjoying the project. It became an impromptu team, all of us working together to figure out problems and learn the craft as we went. This was an exciting development, to say the least.


At the street festival, after fall of night, we projected a video of the Willimantic River onto the sail of the boat as we pulled it along. The river runs parallel to Main Street, where the festival is held monthly from May to October. Willimantic, "Thread City," is an old mill town that's fallen on hard luck in recent years. The town is experiencing a bit of a renaissance, however, and the vital role of the river in its continued prosperity has been a theme throughout the common feeling of the citizenry.


Our collaboration evolved into a project of the larger community. The future of the boat is unclear. We plan to house it over the winter and take it for a trip on the river when the ice breaks. We are investigating possibilities of a permanent home for it in town as a sort of public monument built by and for the people.