Bras across the grand canyon
A great dream that never came to fruition. In the early 1990s, the California artist Nicolino launched a project to string 10,000 bras across the Grand Canyon. First he needed to get 10,000 bras. Then he needed to get permission from the park service. He never got either.
Saint George Daily Spectrum - Nov 16, 1993
St. Louis Post-Dispatch - June 1, 1994
Albuquerque Journal - Dec 25, 1993
Comments
Can't really speak for the tensile strength of women's underwear (I'm a materials engineer but that's not my field of study) but I seriously doubt that, without reinforcement, the line had any hope of staying intact. A mile of clothes would be a huge weight (especially if they were trying to go anywhere near horizontal) and one weak link...
Posted by crc on 11/27/17 at 07:07 AM
Snopes has an interesting entry about Ron Nicolino.
Nicolino is a conceptual artist who, in the mid-1990s, attempted to acquire enough surplus brassieres to be able to string them together and produce a work called Bras Across the Grand Canyon, “a politically designed project, to convey how America is body and breast obsessed.” Alas, donations petered out after Nicolino collected about 20,000 bras, not enough to make it all the way across the Grand Canyon. The artist then came up with a plan to use 40,000 bras in creating a symbolic “political request by women all across the country to get Clinton to do more breast cancer prevention research.” Nicolino’s symbol was to be the National Bra Tapestry, a 40-foot by 100-foot depiction of the Statue of Liberty made entirely of brassieres which, when completed, was supposed to have been taken on a 20-city tour the USA before arriving in Washington, D.C., to be presented to President Clinton. That project also failed to come to fruition (although in March 1994, Nicolino and 200 volunteers did succeed in creating a two-mile-long sand sculpture consisting of 21,000 size 34C breasts in Stinson Beach, California).
Link is at https://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/braball.asp
Nicolino is a conceptual artist who, in the mid-1990s, attempted to acquire enough surplus brassieres to be able to string them together and produce a work called Bras Across the Grand Canyon, “a politically designed project, to convey how America is body and breast obsessed.” Alas, donations petered out after Nicolino collected about 20,000 bras, not enough to make it all the way across the Grand Canyon. The artist then came up with a plan to use 40,000 bras in creating a symbolic “political request by women all across the country to get Clinton to do more breast cancer prevention research.” Nicolino’s symbol was to be the National Bra Tapestry, a 40-foot by 100-foot depiction of the Statue of Liberty made entirely of brassieres which, when completed, was supposed to have been taken on a 20-city tour the USA before arriving in Washington, D.C., to be presented to President Clinton. That project also failed to come to fruition (although in March 1994, Nicolino and 200 volunteers did succeed in creating a two-mile-long sand sculpture consisting of 21,000 size 34C breasts in Stinson Beach, California).
Link is at https://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/braball.asp
Posted by Fritz G on 11/27/17 at 07:54 AM
Poor Mr. Nicolino wound up being obsessed with breast size, himself, and was confined to a padded room.
Posted by Virtual on 11/27/17 at 09:52 AM
When my old undershorts need to retire, I cut them up and use them in the shop for cleanup when I work on my vehicles. So, what happens to old brassieres? Do they just become landfill?
Posted by KDP on 11/27/17 at 04:50 PM
Finally, someone found a practical use for bras.
Posted by Brian on 11/30/17 at 11:12 PM
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Category: Art | Underwear | 1990s