The new studio

The studio is almost ready! August 6 is going to be our Grand Opening. I’ve written a couple of times recently about my excitement at moving into a new studio space surrounded by other artists. Well, the time has come for all of you to show up now and visit. If you’re in Rochester on August 6, 2010 from 6:00 – 9:00 PM, we’re hoping you’ll take the time to stop in, eat some food and drink some wine. Please RSVP so we can toss your name into the hat for door prizes that night.

A few people have already seen the studio in a not-quite-finished form. We had a sort of pre-grand opening balloon jam a few weeks ago. Thanks to all of the balloon artists that attended. The prize for greatest distance traveled to attend goes to Renate McIntosh and her kids, traveling from DE. (Well, they were on the road anyway, but it’s fun to think they came just for the jam.)

The White House – Two years in a row

Balloon Crew at the White House - July 4, 2010

For the second year in a row (my third time), I was invited to be part of a team entertaining guests at the White House on July 4. The guests included honored members of the military and their families. The team I was on consisted this year of Todd Neufeld, Alberto Nava, Brian Asman, Laura Caldwell, John Reid, Robbie Furman and Lily Hayes. At something like 98 degrees on the South Lawn, this wasn’t exactly an easy gig, but it’s always fun being surrounded by smiling folks having a great time. The official White House video of the event even includes a shot of Laura twisting (58 seconds in).

Some history

A couple weeks ago I opened my mailbox and found a copy of the latest issue of Cabinet Magazine. This art and culture quarterly is absolutely beautiful and fun to read. This issue contains an article by Jonathan Allen devoted to balloons as an artistic medium. I’m thrilled that my work is featured prominently in the article, but I’ll get to that part later. It was his mention of the “balloon world’s Woodstock” (aka TJam 1999) in Austin, Texas that struck me as a such a timely reference. I actually read the article while on my way to teach as part of the current incarnation of that event: TJam on the Road. Reading his article made me want to share some of my memories.

TJam 1999 banquet

Jonathan does a great job of citing key points in the history of balloon art. Those interested should read his article in Cabinet. I’ll just go into more of a personal bit for me. In 1991, the community that turned into BalloonHQ.com was formed. Online communities were a new concept. Very quickly, there were discussions about how the members of this community could gather and actually meet face to face. At the time, Internet access was limited to mostly big academic institutions and a few very large companies. That meant that the majority of our members were college students. This isn’t a demographic that typically has money to spend on hotel meeting rooms or, for that matter, ANY hotel rooms.

The conversation about meeting went on for a few years. Some of us managed to meet in small groups to jam with balloons. Balloon jams are, like the jams of jazz musicians, simply a gathering in which a few people experiment with their art in a collaborative fashion. In 1998, Tom Myers, then owner of T Myers Magic, proposed a mega jam. He would host it in Austin. He would invite everyone in the balloon world to his home for T & Jam. We’d finally all meet.  It would be cheap, to satisfy the wants of the poor students. (Many of the college students in the early discussions were successfully avoiding the real world by now attending grad school, so cheap was still important.) It would be our version of Woodstock.

TJam became a bi-annual convention for balloon artists and entertainers. Another convention, Twist & Shout, likewise happened bi-annually, alternating years with TJam until Tom decided to go a different way and replace the massive convention with TJam on the Road – a traveling convention/jam that made stops in cities around the US. Twist & Shout continued as a large gathering and became an annual event to fill the void left by TJam.

Tom retired from the business and sold T Myers Magic a few years ago. TJam on the Road went away when Tom did and was sorely missed by many. The new owners, Gus and Bettina Davis, received requests regularly to bring it back. This year they have. With the help of artist Robbie Furman and a collection of other teachers, the tour is back. Robbie is teaching and jamming in 40 cities in the continental US throughout the summer, accompanied by Italian artist Alberto Nava. A handful of other balloon industry celebrity artists are making guest appearances in different cities and offering full days of classes and more jamming.

I was honored to be part of the tour. I just completed two days of teaching in Fort Lee, NJ and Plymouth, MA. I saw a lot of old friends and met many new ones. I wish Robbie, Alberto, and all the other artists taking part a lot of fun and success on the rest of the summer tour and I encourage other artists to check out the remaining dates and join them if you can. I can’t wait for TJam to stop in Rochester on August 27. The special guest artist for the tour stop here will be Don Caldwell. A meeting room is already booked for it, but we’ve been talking to Robbie about changing things up and hosting the stop in the new studio.  We’ll keep you posted on that.

Back to Cabinet

OK. I admit it. I have a big ego.  It comes with the job. I get in front of people all the time and I have to like hearing myself talk or I wouldn’t be able to cut it in this line of work. But more than that, I wait impatiently to read the next article that mentions my name. Knowing this article would include my work made me really happy. Then, seeing who else appeared in the article made me happier still. It was great seeing friends like Ralph Dewey mentioned, but the best part was that Ralph and I were compared to Leonardo Da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli. Now that was cool!

Airigami’s new home

Let’s begin on the local front. I mentioned last month that Airigami was moving into a studio in the Hungerford Building in downtown Rochester. We have moved in. The setting up of the new place is going a lot slower than I had hoped. Kelly and I wanted to focus on the move, but there’s been more than enough work to keep us busy without the distraction of fixing up the office. That’s made it rather impossible to just stop and play in our new space. On a positive note, the new studio does offer us all of the space we need to get things done. One thing we’ve already managed to do, even without all the fixtures in place, is shoot some video for some upcoming instructional materials we’ll be putting out. Prior to this, we simply didn’t have enough space to point a camera and have a clean shot of anything.

In my last blog post, I babbled excitedly about being amidst other artists. My excitement about that hasn’t changed. The building has a rather active group of creative individuals, called the Hungerford Urban Artists. I’ve now had a chance to meet a number of them. When I have some time, I expect I’ll be writing about some of their work. One of the best parts of this group is the monthly event they put on.  The first Friday every month brings an open house at the Hungerford. Many artists take part. Doors are open. Munchies can be found all over. Last month, there was tons of conversation. We were barely in the building and hadn’t expected to open our doors.  We didn’t feel we had anything to show yet. Our walls are still bare, even now, a couple weeks later. Still, we were inundated with questions about what we do. Other artists from the building, along with many guests from outside came to hang out and see anything we could show. We were able to quickly set up a monitor with some video of our interesting projects, and some of the gallery pieces we’ve made ended up leaning against walls where it was at least visible. Despite our ragged appearance, we seem to have even made a sale.

In the future, we hope to build a sculpture during each First Friday event. That is, starting in August. We thought we’d be ready for everyone to show up on July 2, but that was before we found out we’d be out of town. But that, in itself, is a story. Of course, you don’t have to wait for First Friday to come around if you want to visit and check out the artwork and books we have for sale. Just give us a call if you want to stop by. You can also preview some of what we have in the Airigami web store.

The summer is looking to be busy

So, why won’t we be available for the July First Friday? For the second year in a row, I’ve been asked, along with a small team of other artists, to entertain invited guests to the White House Independence Day celebration. Last year, a group of us, including Todd Neufeld and Buster Balloon, had an opportunity to install a giant American flag on the White House lawn. This year, our focus will be strolling and entertaining the crowd. Our pieces may be smaller, but we plan on making just as large an impact on the event. Hopefully we’ll be able to avoid the very confusing lost gun incident from last year. While this is my second July 4th event at the White House, it’s the third White House event I’m taking part in. There have been great stories to share from each, so I’m looking forward to this year’s event and whatever will come out of it.

Upon returning home, we’ll have to start planning the pieces we’ll be making for the Rochester PRIDE parade on July 17. Details still have to be worked out, but right now we’re talking about creating costumes that reflect the pride and history of the LGBT community in this region. This should be a really fun event to take part in. Of course, if that doesn’t already sound like a big enough project to keep us busy, we also offered to assist with a  sculpture for the Hunter Resch Foundation on the same day.

Upcoming dates

Don’t forget to look for interesting events on the Airigami calendar. Here are the next few events coming up.

• June 28 – Larry Moss and Robbie Furman teach at TJam on the Road in Fort Lee, NJ.
• June 29 – Larry and Robbie teach at TJam on the Road in Plymouth, MA. Details and registration at TMyers.com
• July 4 – Larry and Kelly meet up with Todd Neufeld, Laura Caldwell, and John Reid to entertain on the White House lawn.
• July 17 – Costumes made by Larry and Kelly will be worn in the Rochester PRIDE parade.
• July 17 – A sculpture made by Larry and Kelly will appear at a fundraiser for the Hunter Resch Foundation.
• August 6 – First Friday at the Hungerford. The studio will be open for visitors.

Mini triceratops made with a few twisted Qualatex balloons and a few Glue Dots to help out.

Thanks to everyone that’s been helping us in trying to get a Pepsi Refresh grant. We’ve got a little over three more weeks to keep the votes going. It’s been fun to see so many people rally behind us. In fact, we have two big partners that I need to thank for all of their support, both in this campaign to get the grant and in the products that make these projects possible. Pioneer Balloon Company (Qualatex Balloons) and Glue Dots International. I’m excited to have both of them pushing for us. And to make things better, they’ve both announced new things that I’ll be using. I haven’t gotten any of the new Glue Dots Dot N’ Go dispensers yet, but I’ve been wanting a convenient dispenser for these things forever. Right now I’m just buying the big industrial boxes of dots. We use that many of them on the big projects that I suppose the industrial boxes aren’t a bad thing.  But something small to carry in my balloon bag will be nice. On the Qualatex front, my order of mocha and blush 321s just arrived.  Yeah!

We’re doing reasonably well on the campaign to get the grant, but still a bit behind where we need to be. Over 200 projects appear in our category and we’ve been holding our own, hovering just below the top ten.  Unfortunately, we need to be in the top ten at the end of the month.  With just a little more of a push, we can move up a couple of spots.

So thanks to the community that’s always been there for me.  All of the BalloonHQ members and guests have been doing an enormous amount of work in pushing this. Please, keep voting on a daily basis.

Of course, I realized yesterday how silly it was to just be calling people, tweeting and asking for votes when the whole point of this was to make an art project possible. The fact is, the phone calls, tweets and requests for support were stopping me from actually creating art. When that idea struck me, I forced myself to take a break from my desk and actually create something new. It’s small and fairly simple, and far from the 30-foot long version of this cretaceous creature that Elastic Park will show, but it is a dinosaur. I’ve spent so much time over the last few months on plans for the big exhibit, I never actually stopped to make any small dinosaurs.  So, here we are.  A cute little triceratops. A few heart balloons, a few twists, and I felt much more relaxed. I have to remember, I left my life as a programmer because art made me feel so free and relaxed. Gotta focus on doing more art.

Of course, always wanting to get things right, I finished this and then wondered if I picked the right color for my little triceratops. After all, there was just a paper published (well, at least one that I just read about) on dino colors. At long last, it seems that we have real scientific clues as to the coloring of  the prehistoric dinosaurs. I may have to do a little more research before some five-year-old points out my errant creation. At least I know most five-year-olds will take a little time to get up to speed on the new color information since most of them aren’t reading the New York Times. But who knows. They put some pretty cool things in the Weekly Reader these days and dinosaurs are always a hot topic among kids.  Maybe I don’t have much of a head start on them.

Don’t forget to vote daily for Elastic Park, the multi-thousand-square-foot dinosaur exhibition made entirely out of balloons.

Read more about Elastic Park.

Vote for us to get $50,000 in funding to launch this traveling show.

Pepsi recently announced their intent to give away over a million dollars a month for community projects.  The public will determine where the money goes. All you have to do is visit the Pepsi site to cast your vote. Each person is allowed to vote every day during the voting period (February 1-28, 2010). Please vote and spread the word. The more people we get to support the project, the better our chance of launching this national touring show.  After voting, please ask your friends to do the same.

If you missed it before, here’s the summary:

Elastic Park is an exhibit, featuring a unique blend of art, pre-history, and pop culture. The multi-thousand-square-foot, interactive exhibit (scalable to fit available space) was inspired by Michael Crichton’s popular novel, Jurassic Park.

Balloons are the medium used to create the exhibit. The unusual medium draws a very diverse crowd both for the construction phase and the display phase. This is important since all large scale Airigami creations are community-based art projects. Community members are invited to participate in the 100,000 balloon creation, working alongside an international crew of skilled artists.

Visitors will walk among the creatures of the Triassic through Cretaceous periods, as described in Crichton’s work. An audio tour with custom music and actor’s voices will guide everyone through, describing the creatures, the art, and telling the story.

Like all major Airigami projects, Elastic Park is about the community. It would be cool if it was just an artistic display.  But we’re taking it much further.  We’re inviting the public to take part in the construction as well. So once we get the funding, we’re going to be asking all of you to join in and help turn our plans into the most incredible dinosaur exhibition seen in the last 65 million years.

While things can certainly change, we expect the first stop on this tour to be Exploration Place in Wichita, KS. This is a fantastic science museum with just the right family-friendly atmosphere for us to work in.

Thanks for your help. We’re looking forward to, once again, populating the planet with pre-historic dinosaurs.

Instructions for voting: Visit http://www.refresheverything.com/ElasticPark. If you don’t see the “vote for this idea” button on the page, you may have to sign in. There’s a link on the bottom of the page to sign in or to register with the site.  When the page refreshes, there will be a big white “vote for this idea” bottom on the top right side of the page. (You shouldn’t have to jump through any extra hoops to vote.  You should be able to just see the vote button when you visit the page and then you should be able to just sign in when you click on it, but a number of people have reported that the site behaves very inconsistently.)

A concept drawing of a snowman snowball fight

It’s been an interesting year.  I participated in a couple of fashion shows, completed the Fine Art Masterworks series I had been working on with the creation of Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. and I spoke at TEDxRochester about large scale projects and where I hope to go with them in the future.

It’s time for the last Airigami project of 2009, and I’m excited that it’s going to be a public project.  It will be fairly small scale compared to some of the others, and that means the focus this time around will be on interacting with the crowd.  If you’re in Rochester, NY, stop by the Riverside Convention Center between 6:30 and 9:30 PM on New Year’s Eve. During that time, I’ll be building a sculpture with your suggestions. I have a plan and there are pieces I’ll definitely do, but the overall piece will change, based on feedback from the crowd. So Start thinking now about what you’d put into a snowman snowball fight.

If you can’t make it on New Year’s Eve, don’t worry.  We’ll have plenty more in store for 2010, from school assembly programs to more large scale projects. We’ve been booking private events as well. And no promises yet, but my goal is to bring Balloon Manor and Elastic Park back.  So many people wrote to me this year asking for them that I know it’s worth the effort.

Kelly's proposed flying cupcake sculpture.

A couple weeks ago, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) , announced a project to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet. And they’re using balloons to do it.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of ten moored, 8 foot, red weather balloons located at ten fixed locations in the continental United States. Balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roadways.  (from http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/)

Almost 18 years ago, I started an online community, BalloonHQ, that unites thousands of balloon artists from around the world. These days, the projects that get most of my attention are those that involve large communities in giant, interactive sculptures. How could I ignore this challenge created by DARPA? There’s no way a single person can possibly find ten weather balloons placed around the continental US without the help of many others. Upon hearing about the project, I posted a note on BalloonHQ.com asking for support to pull this off.  And now that DARPA has clarified some of the details of the challenge (DARPA network challenge FAQ), I’m turning to all of you that read my blog for assistance.

What do you need to do to participate?

This is easy. There’s no way to know where the red balloons will be.  There may be one in your city, but you can’t really plan for it.  All you can do is keep your eyes open on December 5, 2009.  If you see one, you can report it back to me. The balloons will only be available for a maximum of nine hours that day, weather permitting. The balloons may be released a day later if weather or some other interference is encountered.

All official network challenge balloons will be accompanied by officials with credentials that can verify that the balloon is part of the challenge. All of the balloons will also be in places that are easily accessible.  An exact location is needed to identify the balloon. If you see one, jot down GPS coordinates or an address, or a cross street, or something that gets us coordinates within one arc minute of the balloon’s location.

Why should you help?

This should be a fun experiment. It will require the attentiveness of a lot of people and therefore a lot of people should be able to enjoy the fruits of a completed project. DARPA is offering a $40,000 prize to the first individual that reports the locations of all the balloons (or the largest number of them). The money should go toward a community project that everyone can enjoy. It should be a project in the spirit of the challenge. It should unite people across the country, celebrating the Internet, social media, and balloon art. Kelly Cheatle proposed a flying birthday cupcake made of balloons. I’m all for that. The $40K will go to covering the cost of creating the sculpture and housing the participating artists in the project. A good example of the project I have in mind would be the Fantastic Flying Octopus from a few years ago (as seen in the video below).

Let’s give this a shot and see if we can win this challenge. It’s not the winning that’s important. It’s doing something cool with the award that everyone can enjoy. Please help make this happen.

There's so much to think about when attending a TED conference.

TEDxRochester 2009 has come and gone. It was a huge honor to be invited to be a presenter.  I’ve been downloading TED Talk podcasts for a while now. I frequently find myself excitedly sharing some random bit of information I learned from the latest talk I had on my iPod. Now, I was given a chance to present.  I’ve shared a stage with many different people, but this was the first time I was on a stage with presenters as varied as a chemist and museum curators.

With each talk, my mind wandered into ways I may be able to collaborate on projects with each speaker. After all, TED is about sharing, learning, crossing disciplines, and developing new directions for advancement. I couldn’t help but wonder how I could combine the dance and movement taught by Thomas Warfield with balloon puppetry, or how my form of play fits with that of Scott Eberle’s at the Strong National Museum of Play. I thought about how the community building stuff I’ve done with my balloons would fit with the work of life coach Luis Martinez. And I couldn’t help but wonder if Todd Krauss’s work with nanotechnology held the answer to the question of how to keep a balloon inflated indefinitely. (I also wondered for a bit if I’d actually want to see a balloon last forever.)

Thanks to Tony Karakashian, Amanda Doherty, and Gary Jacobs for putting on the event. I couldn’t help but notice the way they each answered the question of, “will you do this again?” Each gave a very definite “yes.” But they had that look in their eyes that said they knew they must be crazy for wanting to do it, but that they felt a definite need to keep this going.  It’s a lot of work, and they directed the focus to their presenters, so they got little attention for their effort. I hope everyone attending took the time to learn something about the people behind the event.

This undersea sculpture was part of Balloons Around the World and was on display at Barnes & Noble in Pittsford, NY. Participants in this project included Larry Moss, Kelly Cheatle, Karyn Dolan, Sheryl Watts, Amy John, Mary Ann Jakubowicz, Rose Hasan, Tim Bourke, Lois Sprague, Brent Chmura, John Barthelmes.

Before going to ArtPrize, I was asked what I’d do if I won.  I answered that I’d take a day off. Whether I won or not, I was fairly certain that  I’d have more than a few projects to work on as soon as I returned home, and more than a day off wasn’t going to happen.  Sure enough, by the time I settled in after the trip, the list of things I was already looking at doing was too long to manage, and since I didn’t win, I couldn’t hire staff to do it all for me. Well, I’ve been back for a couple weeks now, the list keeps growing, and I’ve been bad about updating the blog with recent happenings. So here are just a couple of quick notes.

Balloons Around the World just took place last week. This is the annual event where artists in different cities around the globe join in just for the sake of sharing the fun and wonder of balloons. The crew that was working with me in Rochester was fantastic. Everyone just dove in to the undersea project. I was grateful for all of their help, and as I looked at them, all I could think was, “with friends like these, who needs anemones?”

Balloon Engineer just went on sale at B&N. Larry's newest book, included in a kit with a pump and balloons, has instructions for ten famous landmarks, from Niagara Falls to the Great Sphinx.

What makes Balloons Around the World exciting for me is the interaction with the community. While we don’t get to build Balloon Manor  this year, BATW was still a way to do something in the local community that brought a number of artists and community members together. Anyone that knows me is familiar with my passion for community projects. These projects provide a way to share my art with a wide audience. They give me a way to see people that don’t otherwise think of themselves as artists get excited about art. They get people working together doing something they’ve never done before. Of course, I’m always looks for ways to take that into other communities.

With that interest in community art, I was thrilled to get an invitation to speak at TEDxRochester on the subject of community art. For those unfamiliar with TED, it’s an organization devoted to “Ideas worth spreading.” From conferences to downloadable talks, TED is about sharing ideas. The ideas don’t have to be limited to any particular area and talks aren’t meant to be just directed at any specific audience. The folks at TED have now made it possible for others to offer smaller, local, TED-like conferences, called “TEDx”. It may not be quite the same as the official TED conference, but it will be fun.  I’m excited about giving a TED Talk.

Random notes:

My work was recently featured in an article in The Wall Street Journal.

Mona T-shirt (front)

In a recent post to this blog, I mentioned a quote that I found about my work. I thought the quote was funny and needed to be shared, so I posted a phony T-shirt containing it.  To my surprise, a number of people wrote in asking if they could buy the shirt.  Not wanting to disappoint, I went ahead and made shirts which a number of people wore around Grand Rapids during ArtPrize.  I took it a bit further and made it a more artsy shirt. The quote, “Larry Moss is a hack. I see no dachshunds”  is found on the back. The front contains my rendition of the Mona Lisa. The shirt is available from the Airigami gift shop until I run out of them.

It’s been a long few days.  Thanks to everyone that’s been following the Venus project.  It’s been fun.  I’m looking forward to seeing what other artists  have done for ArtPrize.  But right now, I’m tired. If you’re in Grand Rapids, come see the final sculpture this week.  It will be around until the end of ArtPrize, but these are balloons.  You know how that goes.  They won’t look as sharp a week from now.

I’ll write more soon.  Right now, I’m going to sleep.

Photo by Jay Pike