Every year, people travel from afar and on a large scale. Watch this giant pencil.

John Higgins loves to think of a six -meter -long pencil in his front garden as a piece of pop art.

“When you think about pop art, you think Andy Warhol or Klis Odinberg. I mean, these are these iconic artists. They take a simple being in bold shape and colors, and it is amazing how humans are associated with it.” As it happens Guest host Stephanie Solders.

“This is exactly what this is.”

Once a year, a huge pop art piece becomes an interactive composition of societal art. Hundreds – or even sometimes thousands – people make their way to Higgins’s house in Minneapolis to see the giant lead pen that is more sharpened with a giant pencil strap.

“It is fun. It is happy. There is no agenda. It is not a commercial event. There is no ticket or anything.” “But through an oral word, I think people come and really enjoy.”

The giant pencil was once a giant tree

On Saturday, the fourth pen sharpened event. But the origins of the sculpture dates back to 2017, when a sudden and strong wind storm struck and tears the beloved oak tree from Higgins from his front garden.

He says the tree was about 180 years old.

“It was very difficult to see it happening,” he said. “Very sad, I will say.”

Remember the cut oak trunk in the wreckage of the storm in the wake of it.

“It looked very, as you know, almost evil – just a young man at the top and looked, somewhat at night, like the broken skeleton.”

So he and his wife, Amy Higgins, decided to turn it into art. They recruited the sculptor of wood Cortis Instonelfstad to convert it into a replica of a classic pencil number 2.

“Why is a pencil? Everyone uses a pencil,” said Amy. “Everyone knows a pencil. You see it in school, and you see that in people’s work, or drawings, everything. Therefore, it is accessible to everyone, I think, it can mean something easily, and everyone can do what they want.”

Once the pencil depicted, Higgins says they have reached the idea of ​​sharpening it. So Ingoverstead also drafted a widespread pencil for the task.

“It is about four feet (and weighs a hundred pounds,” he said.

“Life is very short” to miss intensity

Higgins said that the first year did so, attended a few hundred people, most of them from the neighborhood and the surrounding area.

But over the years, he says, it has grown through the word oral and social media. Last year, about 1,000 people who attended. This year, it is estimated that the crowd was in multiple thousands, where people come from outside the state, and even other countries.

Some people wear clothes or erasure. Two Swiss players Alforn presented a part of the entertainment. The hosts celebrated the symbol of Minynabolis, the late music star, by distributing purple pencils as his birthday could have been 67.

Rachel Heyman said she had traveled from Chicago on Friday to the event, a friend who told her about her.

“Some of the man sharpens a pencil on a mark, and this is what is happening?” Heman said on Saturday while wearing a pencil uniform. “Yes, I will be part of it. How can you not? Life is very short.”

Ritual

You may wonder why giant sculptures need to sharpen. Higgins says the edge, although it is not made of bullets of granite, is worn by the weather throughout the year.

However, mostly, he says, it is for symbolism.

“This is a community pencil. With sharpening, there is an opportunity, as you know, renewal, a new start, a promise to write another note,” he said. “People love that message.”

With every sharpening, the pen becomes shorter and loses part of the artwork. Ingvoldstad, the sculptor, says this is the main point.

“Like any rituals, you have to sacrifice something,” said Ingofoldstad. “So we sacrifice part of the plot of pencil, so that we can give it to the audience that comes, and we say,” This is our offers for you, and in goodwill for all the things you did this year. “

So how many years so that it is only a few cups with a bright pink eraser? What happens then?

“We do not have answers to that, and we are fine with that,” Higgins said. “But for today, at this moment, we will take what we have and achieve the maximum benefit from it.”