Art, Music, and Perseverance

Written by Chad Kirchner

Spring Issue '24 - Online Shop

The definition of Alluvion is the action of the sea or a river in forming new land by deposition. You can see an alluvial fan-shaped deposit of clay, silt, sand, and gravel left by flowing streams in the little creeks that meet the lakes. It’s a cool shape.

Sound behaves much like water. Like the waves lapping on the beach or the way a big beautiful river flows, water can be soft, quiet, and peaceful, or like water during a storm, loud and crashing on a breakwall. Sound moves in these ways.

The Alluvion project was a functional art project to manage the acoustics, be an iconic music venue backdrop, create the feeling of flowing water, and feel like a big hug.

Having worked in construction and design, and being a musician and an artist, when I heard about the Alluvion I thought, that’s exactly what I want to be doing!!! Excitedly, I threw my hat into the ring to collaborate with the partners of the Alluvion: Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology, Andrew Lutes from Commongrounds, and Jeff Hass. We worked through a design process together, and I presented a couple of designs and early prototypes built with hot glue, popsicle sticks, and Christmas lights.

If I’m being honest, this project felt like a stretch. In a previous career, I designed interactive courses for art and music educators. I also knew how to build physical objects and tackle hard problems. But this project was on another level. I wanted to do the work so badly, but I didn't have experience building something like this. I knew I could do it, but I didn’t know how or what it would look like. After several conversations, and a lot of ideas, they chose me and I was so thrilled! Any chance to work on a project like this was a dream to me.

Through the process of designing the space with the partners, I learned a lot about light, acoustics, and how sound interacts with surfaces. The backdrop absorbs and reflects sound from multiple directions, and the flow from floor to ceiling nods to an Alluvial flow. The reason it works is the sound travels to a slat (louver), bounces between one and the next, and eventually attenuates behind the wall. This is why a drummer can play loudly. With a flat wall behind, it would bounce off the wall and crash into the audience. The slats deflect those soundwaves and reduce the volume.

Having built acoustic instruments, I understood the different qualities of wood and what creates good tone and resonance. The wall and ceiling system as a whole is intended to be like an acoustic instrument. The walls are made of maple (like the back and sides of a violin), the pillars are made of douglas fir (like the top of a violin). Often, the best sounding acoustic stringed instruments are the ones that have been played a lot. The idea is that the wood takes on the characteristics of the sound that reverberates through it. And, over time, the wood in the Alluvion will take on the sound of the performances in the room, warming, softening the edges of the sound, and becoming fuller. 

During this process, I didn’t just learn about acoustics and wood. I learned a lot about community and leaning into friendships. There was a moment early on when, armed with coffee, donuts, and breakfast sandwiches, my friend Isaiah and I were headed to the Kiks’ house (the wonderful folks who donated the wood for the wall) early on a December morning. We were planning to load about 5,000 feet of lumber onto a flatbed truck. It was close to five tons of weight. We thought, yeah, we’ll just head up to Bellaire, pick up the wood, and head back to Traverse City to drop it off at the mill. Things didn't go as planned. It snowed that night, and aside from the white-knuckle drive with drifting over icy roads, it took a dozen tries to back the truck up the 200-yard, snow-covered driveway. Trying to gain a little more traction and getting sideways with a little more throttle on every consecutive attempt, we made it about two-thirds of the way up and called it good. We blocked the wheels so the truck wouldn’t slide down the hill. We figured, it’ll have more traction when it’s full.

It was at this point I realized I was probably in over my head. But, this was kind of fun. 

Fast forward back to April 2023. I’m at the workshop space (generously donated by the amazing folks at Wunsch Farms) awaiting a truckload of 3,000 feet of fifty-year-old bleachers. We went with used wood because “new” wood was prohibitively expensive. I got a great deal on it, and we found thick enough boards (1”) to hang from the ceiling without getting too wavy. Each board was 20 feet long, covered in gum, chipping blue paint, and cupped in the middle. At least it was seasoned. The wood needed a lot of help. I was prepared to plane, sand, shape, finish, transport, and install every last board by myself. However, after running about 10 bleacher seats through the planer, I realized once again that doing this all myself was insane, and wondered why I didn’t pay a whole lot more to get that unfinished, straight, light, and clear cedar that would have been so easy to work with and smells so good. Well, because hiding under that chipping blue paint, were these beautiful old growth douglas fir boards. At 12 inches wide, the rings show they were each about 250 years old, and the bleachers were already at least 50 years old. That dated these trees to around 1723—still under British rule.

I felt a little pressure knowing this would be a community fixture for many years to come, and with Jeff Hass calling me out in a sold out concert early on, I was determined to complete it and make it excellent. There were a thousand decisions yet to make. It was time to call for professional help. Designing, finishing, shaping, joining, transporting, and installing were many of my duties. But reframing it as a project allowed me to ask for help for the huge tasks where I needed industrial-sized help and other professionals. 

Enter Tim Pierce. Creating a graduated louvered wall was an engineering puzzle that required a heavy hitter. Tim’s CNC, cabinetry, and boatbuilding experience were essential to the build. We became fast friends as we finished about a mile of ceiling boards, and again as we figured out a way to create a frame that would hold the back wall slats firmly while letting the frame disappear in the wall behind. 

At this point, the Alluvion was up and running hosting concerts, so everything had to be built off site. We made a full size prototype of the wall to figure out the optimal angle for light to pass through without seeing the wall behind. For the ceiling I laid out a 56-foot board sandwich, clamped it together with a jig I made, and got to work shaping the waves with a convex power planer and a sanding wheel. There was a lot of wood chips and dust. Then, once the shaping was complete, we turned the shop into a giant spray booth for finishing these bleacher boards. 

I’d like to point out, I’m just a guy who enjoys making things and figuring stuff out…I grew up building stuff in my dad’s woodshop, fixing janky cars and old snowmobiles in the garage,

playing music, and my dad taught me to work on and build acoustic instruments, all the while referencing manuals, and watching videos, learning as I go.

To fit the music schedule, we installed the ceiling over three arduous days in June 2023, and the back wall in two weeks in July. It required all friends on deck to lift and finagle the wobbly boards up the stairs. Right, that was a problem…I must've blocked that out. The only way to get the 20-foot ceiling boards into the building was to go through what is now Nobo Market and up the monumental stairs to the Alluvion. Then, figuring out how to hang the boards from the ceiling was another puzzle to solve: two guys, me and the indefatigable Tim Pierce, scaffolding and some airplane wire. We were threading the boards through existing lights and sound implements, attaching them to unistrut, leveling, joining together, and then straightening 13 courses of wavy boards. 

When it was all done, after a last big push in late July 2023, I just stepped back to take it all in. After pumping the wood full of bluegrass music throughout the build, I cranked up We Will Rock You and danced around the room to celebrate and give the bleacher boards a final send off for their new life as a music venue. 

Building such a large art installation pushed my comfort zone in so many different ways. It has been so rewarding to envision and build a space that supports musicians and performers taking the stage with confidence and joy. With every board installed I imagined one of my bluegrass heroes stepping on stage and being filled with awe, knowing this was a special place to perform where they felt called to give their best. My hope is for all those who enter the Alluvion, they feel that sense of awe. 

It was an incredible joy to work with our community on this project. Special thanks to Rotary Charities for the grant to create this space. Jeff Hass for championing this venue in every possible way. Brad and Amanda Kik, founders of Crosshatch, for their generous wood donation and emotional support. Wunsch Farms for providing workshop space and lumber transportation. Olive Creek Furniture for milling and layup. Northern Wood Finishing in East Jordan for finishing all of the slats. And all the friends and volunteers that helped, without you this would not have been possible. 

BIO

Chad Kirchner is a skiing addict and dad who spends time playing music, cooking, adventuring, writing, designing, and building. He has worked as a functional artist, editor, musician, and trail groomer. Most days you can find him biting off more than he can chew, and then reading self-help books and you-tubing until he figures it out. 

Spring Issue '24 - Online Shop