ABOVE: Detail from Christo’s Over The River, Project For Arkansas River, Colorado (1999), a study for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s latest project.

That Christo and Jeanne-Claude, they’re a class act. The Rocky Mountain News details the first of three wide-open public meetings in Colorado the duo are participating in to persuade the residents of Cañon City to let them run a really big ribbon through their town. Over the River (above) calls for a translucent fabric to be stretched across the river, bank-to-bank, for a length of 40 miles.

Naturally the plan has its detractors and defenders among the locals. People worry about ambulances (bearing mortally weakened patients, you know) being unable to move through the throngs of tourists. They worry about migratory bird patterns. They worry, apparently, about the stress it will induce in sheep. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, though, they never get impatient, they don’t storm off shouting that no one understands their vision, they don’t make threats and throw tantrums. They sit and explain, and take questions, and then they do it again with someone else. As Christo coolly says at the end of the article: “This is not our first project. We are 70 years old.” Guess they’d better get a move on.

LINK: Rocky Mountain News > First of 3 meetings gathers opinion on Christo’s river art