Tuna runs through it: Canstruction turns food to models, raises awareness
By JOE NICKELL of the Missoulian
Shoppers at Southgate Mall stroll by a roller-coaster constructed of cans Friday morning as part of the Montana Food Bank's “Canstruction” event. All of the food used to make the displays will be donated to the Food Bank at the end of the competition.
On Thursday night around 7 o'clock, Garrett Pence realized he didn't have enough tuna to build Mount Sentinel. So he did what any deity would do: He changed the landscape.
“This'll just be the bad view,” he said, grinning as he and a team of employees and friends of Missoula's Oz Architects disassembled the back side of their miniature Sentinel and replaced the uniform green tuna cans with odds and ends - a can of macaroni and beef here, some cut green beans there. That done, his team returned to building up layers of the remaining tuna cans - hundreds in all - into a fair replica of the front side of Missoula's most recognizable peak.
“A little geographical adjustment is all,” he said.
Improvised creativity was at the heart of the Canstruction event at Southgate Mall, where four teams worked for four hours building replicas of familiar icons out of canned food as a way to draw attention to the problem of hunger.
Oz Architects' project, titled “A River Runs Through It,” ultimately encompassed reasonably scale interpretations of both Mount Sentinel and Mount Jumbo, with a rolling river of blue tuna cans running in between.
Nearby, a team of volunteers from the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation and its associated businesses focused its effort on a replica of a Montana Rail Link boxcar - a 70-ton open-top hopper, to be exact.
“I heard about (the Canstruction event) in a companywide e-mail, and thought it was an interesting, different way to be involved in a unique type of project,” said team member April LaRocque, an employee in the payroll department at Modern Machinery.
Actually, Missoula's first Canstruction event followed in the footsteps of a long-lived international project under that same name, promoted by the Society for Design Administration. Originally put on in Denver, Seattle and New York in 1992-93, Canstruction now comprises more than 130 competitions scheduled to take place in the coming year.
Thursday night's contest was organized by the Montana Food Bank Network. The project seemed like a great way to spread the group's message, according to Mark Brennan, director of development for the Missoula-based nonprofit.
“It's a great opportunity to draw attention to hunger, and to do something about it at the same time,” said Brennan. “It's tough for a nonprofit to come up with a touchable tangible event that still relates to your mission. So this is really great in that respect.”
Over the past several months, teams collected their own canned food - more than $10,000 worth, altogether - and designed their projects.
Two of the structures in the contest were built by pre-college students participating in the University of Montana's Upward Bound summer program. Working with engineers and designers from CTA Architects, the student teams spent weeks collecting food and refining their plans - even test-building the projects early this week.
“This was right up our alley, because we do community service projects as well as focus on hands-on education where students have an opportunity to experience what professionals in the community do,” said Angelina Levandowski, academic coordinator for Upward Bound.
One of the student teams built a twisting roller coaster, complete with a loop, out of cans of diced tomatoes, chicken noodle soup and other foodstuffs. The other team applied its efforts to a 6-foot-tall medicine wheel and a pair of grizzly bear tracks.
“It was neat to see the kids take on the complexities involved in structures and designs like this,” said Nick Salmon, one of five architects from CTA Architects who helped the students with the projects. “Our big goal was to share the process of generating and editing ideas with them, to see what architects and engineers do every day. They really wrapped their minds around it and applied themselves.”
After the four groups completed their structures Thursday night, a team of judges - Dennis Johnson, Molly Murphy and Gretchen Iman - considered the projects and presented awards to each team at an event Friday night at the mall.
Upward Bound Team 1 was awarded Jurors Favorite for “The Roller Coaster of Life,” Upward Bound Team 2 earned the Best Use of Labels prize for “Griz Medicine,” the Structural Integrity award was given to the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation for “On Track to End Hunger,” and Oz Architects won “Most Creative Structure” for “A River Runs Through It.”
A People's Choice award - voted on by visitors to the mall on Friday - went to “The Roller Coaster of Life.”
“It was the prohibitive favorite,” Brennan said.
Brennan hopes the event will become a new tradition in Missoula.
“We definitely want to build it to be a bigger event in the future, he said.
Reporter Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358 or at
