the work of art is a journey

Each project is a journey. The work of art is that journey, whether it takes two years or six years or 26 years. We work on the drawings and sketches, then move to the physical side: the wind, the sun, the water, the fear, the pleasure. The complete work of art is both these stages tied together.

When we started work on the full project at Lake Iseo, we were responsible for a thousand things, from the traffic to the movement of people to the security to the work force. We had 600 people working around the clock, in six-hour shifts, who needed to be fed breakfast, lunch and dinner. We rented an entire hotel.

All kinds of people showed up when “The Floating Piers” opened to the public — young and old. People walked the piers by themselves; some brought their dogs. There were handicapped people; there were children; there were babies crawling on the piers.

I walked the piers a lot myself, but in the evening when there were fewer people around. I’d go out with my friends around midnight and walk the full length. It was lovely under the lights. It wasn’t like being on a boat; it wasn’t like being on the shore, with the water on one side and the land on the other. You were literally walking on water. — Christo

The works of art that were among the most discussed of the year were monumental, historical and environmental. A lake-spanning installation by Christo and Jeanne-Claude [...] filled in blank spaces, reminding us of what was missing or what we hadn’t yet explored. Here, the creators explain their work.

‘The Floating Piers’

In Northern Italy, “The Floating Piers,” a vibrant walkway created by the installation artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, traversed villages along the shoreline and connected two small islands on Lake Iseo with the mainland, allowing more than a million visitors to experience the landscape from vantage points never seen before.

Christo first conceived the project in 1970 with his partner and wife, Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009. The 53-foot-wide walkway was open to the public for 16 days in June and July, after which it was dismantled and its parts recycled or resold.
via {ny times}