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 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.

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.

This ten-foot tall cash register was designed and built by Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle (pictured inside the register) with help from Bill McCormack, Smarty Pants and Barbara Levinson.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that Kelly and I were building a cash register for the PMA Blur conference. I’m happy to say it was a huge success. The Promotion Marketing Association presents the Reggie Awards each year at this annual conference. The Reggies are given for promotional campaigns that were successful at the cash register. As far as I know, our register was the largest representation of the Reggie to date.  At ten feet tall, it was big enough for everyone at the conference to take turns posing for photos inside it. Thanks to all of the folks at PMA for the invitation to attend and install our piece, and a huge thank you to Donna Declemente for introducing us to the organization.

Pepsi Refresh Update

We appreciate all the support everyone gave in our effort to win a Pepsi Refresh grant. Looking at our web stats, our YouTube stats and just talking to so many of you, we’re truly convinced that we had more unique votes from individuals than almost all of the other projects. With 13,000 people viewing our video so far, we know we got attention and quite a bit of interest. According to the rules Pepsi established, we’d be automatically re-entered in the voting for the month of April, but we simply refuse to stretch this out any longer. We want to say “Thank you” to Pepsi for the opportunity.  We think it’s great that they’re offering money and supporting many worthwhile projects. However, it’s time for us to step aside and not annoy our supporters any longer with requests to vote.  There are much more productive things all of us can do with our time at this point and the last thing we want to do is harass people that are trying to help us out. Thanks for all of the votes.  We’ll go back to more traditional means of fundraising and will make sure that Elastic Park happens some day.

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.

Mark Verge, Elastic Park's chief dinosaur designer, took first place in the large sculpture competition at Twist & Shout 2010 in Chicago with this life size spinosaurus.

Last month I sent out a note asking everyone to vote online so that Elastic Park could receive a Pepsi Refresh grant. Thanks so much to all of you that helped.  It almost worked.  We were pretty high up in the ranks for a while and ended in 22nd place. Out of 204 entries, that’s not too shabby. And we were high enough that our entry was automatically resubmitted for March. We were close enough, I know we can make the top ten this month to get this show on the road. I have to admit, I was ready to let the whole thing drop just a few hours ago when I learned we didn’t win in February.  But the huge number of votes so far today has already pushed us into the top ten.

The Pepsi voting site is set up to allow (encourage?) people to vote for their ten favorite projects on a daily basis. That means we need as many people as possible to vote every day. A number of people asked last month for daily reminders to go vote. We’ve set up a  mailing list for people that want that daily reminder. I will not send a reminder to my regular mailing list since I don’t want to annoy everyone.  If you want to vote for Elastic Park and would like a daily reminder, please write to me directly or visit the sign-up page. If, and only if, you sign up for it, you’ll get a reminder once a day that it’s time to vote.  We’ll keep you informed on where we’re standing and any interesting dino updates we can give you.

A special thanks to the Pioneer Balloon Company and Glue Dots for their support in getting this thing going. If there are any other businesses that would like to jump in and help us out, we’d greatly appreciate the support.

Vote for Elastic Park right now.

Get daily dino jokes, pictures, and reminders to vote.

Other recent stuff

I just returned last week from the annual balloon twisting convention, Twist & Shout.  This year it took place in Chicago and WGN was on site.  I got to talk a bit on the air about Elastic Park, but there was a much more amusing television moment than that.  Eleven entertainers woke up early in the morning to climb inside of balloons for the camera. Ten did it successfully.  Watch the clip and see for yourself the craziness in a hotel full of balloon artists, clowns, and magicians. (This isn’t actually the clip from WGN but from another camera that was running at the same time.)

Go to the WGN site and look for “Balloon Convention” to see the clip that aired.

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.