An installation by Micah Lexier
Featuring a Story by Derek McCormack and twenty-thousand Custom Minted Coins
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20,000 nickel-plated coins arrived from the manufacturer.
The coins were separated by letter.
The coins needed for each line of text were collected and placed in their own numbered container. Each container consisted of exactly 200 letters / coins. For organizational purposes the coins stayed together in these batches for the remainder of production and installation.
A mounting pin was welded to the back of
each coin by Uli Dehez and his assistants.
Uli designed a special jig to locate and center the mounting pin on each coin.
Each mounting pin was laser-welded several times to the back.
Each coin was then polished by Ken Nicol.
Ken designed a special tool to hold the coins while he polished them.
The polished coins sat face-side down until
they were placed into a packing box.
Each packing box consisted of a vinyl print-out of that row's
complete text, which was attached to a thick piece of ethafoam.
The vinyl/foam was then placed in a custom-printed cardboard box.
Each packing box held one entire horizontal row of 200 coins.
Each box was labeled with its row number.
The labeled boxes were stored until they were shipped
to the BMO Project Room for installation.
Installer Dustin Baldwin and his assistant, Todd Selig, prepared
the wall by placing a paper grid over its entire surface.
once the wall was completely covered with the paper grid they
marked the location for each of the 20,000 mounting pins.
Dustin and Todd each installed one box/row at
a time, in order to keep the story organized.
Each coin was individually pressed into the wall exactly one inch apart.
A 1/4 inch spacer bar (see the black bar in Todd's right hand) was placed between the wall and the coins to ensure a consistent
distance from the wall.
It took Dustin and Todd  two weeks to layout the paper grid, mark the wall, and install the 20,000 coins.