First Friday past and future.

For starters, whether or not you made it to our grand opening the First Friday of August, we’d love to have you join us on September 3 from 6-9 PM for this next First Friday. Just like last month, we’re not the only studio open, so come and experience the art of the Hungerford Urban Artisans. We had a blast during our opening. Visitors posed with a mermaid sculpture we made for the event. Many of our guests also tried their hands twisting balloons. Come and see what we whip up this month.

What else is coming

It’s back to school time. While school hasn’t actually begun yet, I have had the opportunity to dust off the elementary school show already. I’ve been performing How to Catch a Mouse for years to the kindergarten through sixth grade crowd. The show last week was for a summer program run by the Rush-Henrietta school district here as one of their last special programs before the kids return to school. I have a few schools booked for the coming year, and I know many more are to come. Thanks go out to Young Audiences of Rochester and Young Audiences of Western New York for coordinating most of the school shows I personally present in Western and Central NY. The popularity of the show has been growing, and the number of other entertainers now doing the show in other regions of the country has also grown. Smarty Pants in Chicago, Jungle Jim Manning in New England and Annie Banannie in Southern California, are just a few of the people performing it now. Cathy Adams, Mike Iradi and Marsha Gallagher are among the names being added to the roster. So wherever you are in the country, let us know if you’re interested in bringing the show to your school. We may have someone ready to present it in your area.

Of course, it’s not just elementary schools that have Airigami presentations. We’re hitting a few colleges over the next couple months too. I’ll be doing some strolling entertainment over the next few days at Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College, and a sculpture installation next month at SUNY Oswego.

As always, check our calendar to see what we’ll be doing that’s open to the public.

Kasha Davis walks in the Rochester PRIDE Parade (photo: Pat St Clair)

What we’ve been up to

So what’s been keeping us so busy that I haven’t had time to blog? Aside from setting things up in the studio, we’ve had a chance to take part in some pretty cool events. In mid July we took part in the Rochester PRIDE parade. What a blast. We were surrounded by some really colorful people, so we did our best to add to the color. We were honored to make a costume for drag queen Kasha Davis, along with some other sculptures that were worn along the entire parade route.

Bicycle and rider made for the Ride for Their Lives

On August 20, the Surviving Parents Coalition launched the Ride For Their Lives. The goal of the Surviving Parents Coalition is to prevent predatory crimes through awareness, education, and legislation. We took part in the launch of this nationwide bike tour with an Airigami bicycle.

Rochester became a tour stop for TJam on the Road on August 27. Robbie Furman, Alberto Nava and Don Caldwell spent a day in our studio teaching professional ballooning classes. This isn’t the first time Robbie and Don have been here. Don was my co-lead and head monster maker on all four Balloon Manors, as well as assisting on other projects, and Robbie was also on the Balloon Manor crew. It was great having Alberto join us. The packed room told us that we need to host more classes. Kelly and I plan on teaching classes in the coming months. We’ve also talked to other local and out-of-town artists about teaching. We haven’t put a schedule together just yet, but don’t let that stop you from letting us know if you’re interested. Classes will range from beginner through advanced and will cover a variety of subjects. Let us know what you’d like to learn from us.

A fun addition to our offerings

I’m asked all the time about making my sculptures last longer. The only consistent method we’ve found so far is through photos. We’re now partnering with Picture Marketing, Inc to make that easier. We regularly create installation pieces that invite people to jump in and pose for pictures. The folks at Picture Marketing have a fantastic system for sharing digital images. They take the photo. All you have to do is go home and retrieve it on the web. Only you have access to your own photo unless you choose to share it. We expect that many of the events we participate in will be able to add this additional element to make Airigami sculptures last forever.

Visiting us in the studio

Don’t forget, we’d love to have you come and visit.  Just give us a call when you’re around and check with us before popping in. We don’t have regular hours, but we’ll do our best to meet you when you call.

The official invitation

If you can’t make it to the opening (or just can’t wait that long)

We’ll be showing work at two other events this Saturday, July 17, 2010.

• We’ll be making strolling sculptures for the Rochester PRIDE parade on Park Ave at 3:00.
• We’ll have a sculpture on display at the Hunter Resch Foundation’s fundraising carnival from noon – 7 PM at Greece Baptist Church, 1230 Long Pond Road, Greece, NY 14626. (Proceeds Benefit The Hunter Resch Foundation in the fight against domestic violence.)

The future Airigami studio in the Hungerford building.

I had a meeting a few days ago about a potential project this summer. I have meetings about potential projects all the time. What made this one interesting was that we didn’t talk so much about what we’d create, but about how to be creative. This would be for the employees at an ad agency. We discussed my particular brand of creativity and how I got to where I am in my work. The trick is to structure a day so that all 150 employees in the local office can walk away with a new insight that they can apply to their own work, build a greater sense of community within the group, and produce something so totally awesome that they’re truly inspired. That’s a tall order.

As I think about my creativity and what’s inspired me, I think of all the time I’ve spent looking at other people’s artwork. Not the artwork of other “balloon artists”, but the people that work with other media. I’ve spent time working with other media myself. My favorite experimental medium was glass. I went into it thinking that glass could take on some of the same shapes as balloons. I thought for sure that I understood what was involved in making things from globs of molten silica. I learned I was completely wrong. But, I was truly inspired by what could be done and what I learned about glass. Suddenly, I was trying to use balloons to get new shapes that I had never considered before. I’ve gone through that with other media as well.  I’ll pick something up, experiment and come out trying to mimic, using balloons, what I learned from each new material. Note I said “trying to mimic”. In reality what I create is almost always entirely different than what inspired the attempt, and that’s what I find most fun and exciting about the process.

I want to take my work to a new level. I want to continue to be inspired by other artists.  I want to work in a location surrounded by other artists. I’m happy to say, I found just such a work place. For a long time I’ve wanted an art studio to work in. I’ve had an office at home for years, and I create wherever I go, but I feel like so much of my time is spent in isolation. I’ve been lacking that studio space amidst an artist community. Starting in June, Kelly and I will finally have a studio to work in. It’s in the Hungerford Building on East Main St in Rochester. This is an awesome location with plenty of space and plenty of other art studios with artists willing to share. I’m really excited about having a place that I can actually build stuff without concern for cleaning up my tools as soon as I’m done. It’s a place that will always have room for me to take photos of my work so I’ll be able to record more of what I do and get back to writing more books. I’ll be able to host small classes and jams without searching for new locations every time. I’ll give more info about the studio soon.  I need to get myself set up there first. Then I’ll invite everyone to stop by.

An outside project

This talk of inspiration through other media has me wanting to talk about a current obsession of mine. This has nothing to do with the art I create to sell or the work I’m known for, except that I’ve been far more excited about it than anything else I’ve created recently simply because it lets my mind wander in new directions. My daughter recently asked for a dollhouse. (“Recently” is a relative term that can only be fully appreciated by someone that’s attempted to build a dollhouse. It refers to a time just before I began this project, however I realize many people would not call 6 months recent when talking about a request from a 7 year old.) My dad started building dollhouses a couple years ago and Morgan plays with them whenever she’s in NYC visiting. Now she wanted her own. Conveniently, my dad left an unopened dollhouse kit in my basement that he figured he’d build some day. I decided to take on this new challenge. I work with my hands.  I figured I could do this.  It turned out to be like my experiments with glass all over again. In case there’s any question in your mind, let me assure you that wood is completely unlike balloons.

If you’ve never built a dollhouse, you might be wondering what the big deal is. After all, a kit is a kit. You punch out a few pieces from die cut sheets and follow some instructions to end up with a nifty model. Well, as it happens, that’s quite an incredible understatement. There are simple dollhouses that are basically wooden boxes with dividers in them to make up a few rooms, and then there’s this Victorian house kit that Dad happened to leave in my basement that contained the words in the unbelievably inadequate instructions warning that “this is not a weekend project.” Add to that my lack of interest in following recipes.  When I make something, I always want it to be mine. This isn’t about being too lazy to read instructions, or thinking that they don’t apply to me. I just wanted this to be my project and wanted, from the beginning, to customize it. That is what an artist does, right?

So what does an artist do to customize a prepackaged kit? Well, paint seems like the obvious first choice. Not wanting to stray too far from my usual medium, I did stick with latex paint. But that’s still not good enough. I got a little carried away with the wallpaper concept. Only one room is papered right now, but I’m happy to say it’s with wallpaper of my own creation. There just didn’t seem to be suitable wallpaper out there. I also decided that lighting was important in any house, and the dollhouse lighting kits out there just seemed to be way over the top in cost. So I’ve been experimenting with my own LED lights and wiring. I’ll get the wiring finished to my liking, put all the siding on, and then start hanging artwork on walls.  Morgan’s already made a bunch of furniture herself.  She’s helped with the house painting, and when she saw me making wallpaper, she decided to make flooring (think of it as hand drawn wallpaper that she thinks would make for great carpeting). I don’t know if this will have any impact on my other art any time soon, but it’s been fun.  Morgan and I will probably keep tinkering with it for months to come, getting it just right.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find time some day to do another. What I really want now is to get back to glass stuff. Maybe there’s a glass artist in the Hungerford that does flameworking and can help me make chandeliers.

One of the things I dug up was a video that aired on Fuji Television in japan in December 1998.  The video has actually been online all this time.  But as Internet connection speeds and monitor resolutions have increased, the thumbnail-sized video I had online looks a little silly now. So, as a fun look back at what large scale balloon projects used to look like, here it is at a larger, more visible scale.

The samurai and demon in this video was my first mega huge balloon project. It was built in Tokyo with a crew combining Japanese celebrities and a television stage crew. This opened the door to my large sculptures as community and team building projects. I didn’t speak the language of my crew, but we were able to communicate through art and produced something absolutely amazing. My work style has changed immensely in the years since this. I learned a lot on this project that I’ve been able to teach everywhere I’ve been in the world. Notice the drama in the build. You don’t need to speak Japanese to catch all of it in this video. Some projects these days are just as stressful when there are serious time constraints, but this was truly an example of learning on the job. It turned out that some of the techniques I intended to use just didn’t translate to the larger scale we had to work at.  I had become accustomed to building sculptures using a few hundred balloons.  This one required 15,000.

Promotion Marketing Association’s Blur Conference

Concept sketch for the cash register to be built at the PMA conference in Chicago March 23-24.

In addition to the book project, I do have another smaller installation I’ve been planning. I’m off to Chicago next week to create a giant antique cash register for the Promotion Marketing Association.  At first, I have to admit, I wondered how I was going to make a fifteen foot cash register exciting.  But after a bit of playing with it, Kelly and I came up with a plan that I can’t wait to put in place.  This thing will be a blast. I can’t wait to see conference attendees taking turns standing inside the register for photos.

Elastic Park voting and the Pepsi Refresh project

Thanks to everyone that’s been supporting us on the quest for a Pepsi Refresh grant. Over 10,000 people have viewed the Elastic Park video in the last month and a half. I can only imagine how many votes that’s translated into. As promised, I haven’t been pestering everyone about continuing to vote.  But we can still use your help.  You can vote for us daily to help us get the $50,000 grant needed to make Elastic Park a reality. If you do want daily reminders from us to vote, feel free to sign up for them. We’re making those reminders as fun as we can by including jokes, pictures and other fun items related to dinosaurs. If you want to know what fun facts you’ve missed over the last couple of weeks, you can find everything we’ve sent out on the Elastic Park blog.

Alice and the Mad Hatter played by Jacqueline Hernandez and Sheldon Blake. Also pictured, designers Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle.

The Queen of Hearts by Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle appeared in the Las Vegas Balloon Couture Fashion Show in 2008.

It was at least a year ago when viral email, filled with photos of balloon dresses, traveled across the Internet. It was fun to see the public getting excited over balloon artwork. (It would have been much nicer if the designers were credited in that email, but that’s a topic for another time.) There was some beautiful work in those photos, and things have come so much further even in the last year since those circulated.   Since the time that those pieces of couture fashion were created in China, there have been a  couple of balloon fashion shows in the US.  Many of the same artists took part, along with others that were intrigued by the whole concept.

The Balloon Couture Fashion Show in Las Vegas, Nevada last summer, and then again last week, was a perfect opportunity to try new things. I actually made my first balloon costume (I wouldn’t have called it “clothing” just yet) at least 15 years ago, but it was just a novelty that I didn’t think was worth pursuing. Then again several years ago, I started making full size bride and groom sculptures that included fairly intricate clothing. Those tuxedos and dresses weren’t designed to be worn by people. At the time, I wasn’t worried about sizing them to a model, and I didn’t consider mobility while wearing them.  Clearly, the popularity of the recent fashion shows demonstrated that I needed to rethink my designs and actually get them onto models.  And if I was going to do this now, I had to find  a way to make my pieces different from the clothing other artists were already creating.

Artists like Rie Hosokai and Debbie Stevens (just to name a couple) demonstrated that balloon clothing could be just as elegant as couture made with other materials. I decided to take things in a different direction. Balloons are fun and playful. I wanted to make more whimsical pieces. For last year’s show, Kelly and I created clothing that resembled playing cards. We captured the reflection of the models in the lower portion of the clothes in the way that playing cards do.  This year, we created Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter.  The first challenge was to create clothing that was fun and playful. We wanted to tell a story. The second challenge was creating an outfit for a male model.  In the balloon fashion shows seen around the world, the focus has always been on dresses. Creating paints,  jackets and shoes are typically avoided due to the difficulty of executing them cleanly. We were determined to take that on directly.

Clothing and detailed balloon weaving is showing up in more places. Kelly and I will be pushing the envelope even further in the work we’re creating for ArtPrize. While in Grand Rapids for ArtPrize in a couple weeks, I’ll also be teaching a class that will go into weaving fabrics and dress creation, along with techniques used in  very large scale creations, like Soccer Players, which was co-designed with Royal Sorell.

The Las Vegas Fashion Show got the attention of NBC’s Today Show.  A feature story about the event will appear on  Today on September 1, during the 8 AM hour. Larry will be appearing live on the show as part of the story. He’ll be making caricatures of some of the Today Show cast. Make sure to tune in!

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli

Many of you have already heard the sad news. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to pull together the funds needed to bring the 2009 Balloon Manor to fruition. It was a valiant effort on the part of many of you out there that called me with suggestions, leads, and  financial contributions. (As promised, all money sent in to save the 2009 Manor will go to the American Cancer Society.) Thank you so much for all the support. Knowing that there are so many people that want to keep the Manor alive is enough to keep me working on it for the future.  I don’t know exactly what we’ll be doing, when, or what form Balloon Manor will take now, but I assure you, this is only a minor setback for Airigami. The artist crew has already been working on plans, and none of us intend to let the work get wasted.

A few other things are happening in the next few months. While none of them are on the scale of Balloon Manor, I thought that fans of the Manor might be interested in them.

• I will be taking part in the second Las Vegas Balloon Couture Fashion Show, coming up on August 16. Some of the photos from last years fashion show are on airigami.com. Like last year, I’ll be working with Kelly Cheatle to wow everyone at the show.
• September 23-Oct 10, I’ll be participating in ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI. This is an international art competition open to artists that work in any medium. Winners will be determined by public vote. This isn’t Balloon Manor, but I’m hoping that fans of the Manor will support my entry there.  I will be showing some of my interpretations of great masterpieces, including a life size, 3D version of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. Kelly is also major part of constructing this work.
• My new book, Balloon Engineer, will hit the shelves in Barnes & Noble in late August or early September. This book has instructions to make  ten “Wonders of the World” with balloons.

I haven’t had a free Halloween season in a while, so I’m open to suggestions for a smaller projects that I and a few of the Airigami team members can be part of this year. Please let me know if you have ideas for something small, manageable, and fun that we can take part in.

Clothing for the wedding couple - and everyone else in attendance

It was probably 15 years ago when I made my first Halloween costume entirely out of balloons.  At the time, I was focusing on magic.  I was still using balloons largely to enhance my magic shows and I was starting to explore balloons on their own.  At the time, even though I was experimenting with making fabrics out of balloons, I needed to have a costume underneath the balloons. They formed more of a framework to a costume than a costume itself. It was a harlequin jester. I thought about including that first “costume” pic here, but couldn’t quite bring myself to it.

Over the last few years, a number of artists have started making more detailed clothing completely out of balloons. Anyone exploring my web site knows that I’ve also gotten into that. Working last year with Kelly Cheatle, I created several pieces for a fashion show in Las Vegas (we’ll be at that show again next month) and we created a piece out of balloons that was designed by Malon Breton for Fashion Week in NYC. We’ve reached the point that it’s no longer just the esoteric events that are showcasing these balloon fashions.  Twice in the last month, Kelly and I have created tuxedos and wedding dresses for guests at local weddings to enjoy.

These particular pieces haven’t been worn by the bride and groom.  Rather, guests have been invited to stand behind them and pose for photos. As soon as I can get some photos with people, I’ll get them online. For now, I’m posting what I have since I just couldn’t wait any longer to share this piece.

Larry Moss on the White House lawn with a giant eagle

Left to right: Todd Neufeld, Nicole Fontana, Larry Moss, Kelly Cheatle, John Reid, Don Caldwell (aka Buster Balloon), Sheryl Neufeld

Entertaining at the White House was every bit as interesting an experience as I had expected. I had plenty of stories the first time I worked a White House event a few years ago. This one, involving a brand new administration and a completely different kind of event was sure to have it’s own tales. We weren’t even 50 yards past the front gate when we found the first story to be shared.

Kelly Cheatle and I got to the grounds at exactly the same time as John Reid and Nikki Fontana. Upon entering, a rather excited Secret Serviceman approached John and asked, “have you seen my gun?” A very shocked John, started to wonder if we really wanted to be at the White House on a day that a member of the Secret Service misplaced a high powered weapon. Thankfully, it turned out that Todd Neufeld and Don Caldwell arrived a few minutes before us, and he was simply refering to a balloon Tommy Gun that Todd had made.

The event was fantastic. There were certainly the little glitches you always expect to encounter at a large gathering of any sort, but nothing that I believe any of the guests were aware of.  All the guests saw was a display that made for an incredible photo opportunity consisting of a few hundred balloons and the smiling faces of military heros, White House staff, and their families.

Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin are seen signing the Declaration of Independence

It was a long day in the heat. Without a couple of tents overhead to work under, and the spray of the fountain behind us, we never would have been able to spend three hours constructing the piece outdoors. Indoors, the sculpture would have been much more elaborate as we wouldn’t have been fighting the wind. Who knows?  Maybe we’ll get another invitation to do something inside.

This small White House was created for my upcoming book, Balloon Engineer, coming out soon. Instructions for creating the White House and other famous buildings and Wonders of the World will be included in the book.

I thought about naming this something like, “Blowing up the White House” or “White House Anticipates More Inflation”, but I thought either of those might result in my invitation being revoked. July 4 is around the corner, and with it lots of Independence Day celebrations. I got a call from Todd Neufeld from the Twisted Balloon Company that the White House was looking for us (“us”, in this case, also includes Buster Balloon and a few other artists) to do a patriotic sculpture installation for their July 4 event on the White House lawn. President Obama, White House staff and military veterans, along with their families, will be at the event. It will be an honor to be there. We’re not certain yet what the sculpture will be, but with an incredible team, this should be a great piece. We’re currently looking at the usual symbols of American Patriotism: bald eagle, US flag, and statue of liberty.

After delivering the news a few days ago about Balloon Manor, it’s nice to be able to think about positive stuff.

There were enough marshmallows for all. The bear, raccoon, and human camper each roasted marshmallows over an open fire.

At the Henrietta, NY Relay for Life, many groups settled in and pitched their tents for the overnight walk. Kelly Cheatle, Karyn Dolan and I did the same.  Of course, as you can imagine, the tent we pitched was a bit different than most. The weather started out just fine for an outdoor event, but it didn’t take too long to turn. Throughout the evening, kids could be seen crawling into our tent.  I’m not sure most of them realized it wasn’t providing any shelter. They just enjoyed getting inside and examining our campsite from a different perspective.

I haven’t heard the numbers yet, so I don’t know how much was raised for the American Cancer Society last night. All I know is that people were more than happy to spend money on the things all around, knowing it was going to a good cause. We had a box set up for donations by those posing for pictures inside our display.  I wish I could have stayed through the night to see how much was collected.  I’m sure I’ll find out soon.

We took the opportunity to talk up Balloon Manor some more. It was a good opportunity to remind people that there’s another large community event benefiting cancer patients in October, IF we can solve our current funding problem.