Jason Hackenwerth's huge balloon creatures
Jason Hackenwerth creates massive surreal balloon sculptures that can take more than a week to complete. This bizarre organism was blown and twisted for a gala last year at the New Museum New York. Link to Jason Hackenwerth site, Link to photos of a Hackenwerth installation at a wedding party (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)
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Hackenwerth's amorphous balloon creations bring to mind the Trips Festival of 1966, or at the very least overgrown mutant jellyfish. I may have to get married just so I can hire this guy. Wonder what his rates are (?)
Trips Festival #1
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Incredibly cool work.
It reminds me the of the pre-Cambrian life-forms that used to exist in the ocean, very cool, but very very "wrong" to eyes used to the way modern life looks.
-abs
Strange! Am I the only one who thinks this creature's shadow resembles the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
This is very nice work, the lighting really shows it off. My only criticism is that it all looks very much the same. There's an awful lot of really good balloon art out there, using an amazing variety of techniques. I'm also a balloon sculptor, but I tend to specialize in making custom balloons on demand.
A couple of links for those interested:
http://balloonhq.com/photos/db/eventphotos.php - Photos from major ballooning events. IBAC tends to have some really nice sculptures. The photography's not always the greatest, but there's some great stuff there.
http://balloonaday.com - shameless plug for my own ballooning site - feel free to suggest stuff!
spike55151: The FSM is always watching you with its noodles.
Twystneko, I was mildly irritated about the "shameless plug" thing until I saw the balloon Cthulhu.
All is forgiven.
The colors and curves here are really wild. I'm trying to decide, looking at it, whether it's meant to be a sea anemone or a Flying Polyp.
The sinuous translucency of balloon rubber seems to evoke the effect of glass sculpture very well, only obviously much cheaper and easier to install. Looking at his other photos it seems that the technique really needs good lighting to look its best, Hackenwerth's work in particular, because it looks like he makes great use of some colored parts of the structure to filter the light shining through the rest.
I wonder why he chose a sea-monster theme for so much of his work; maybe the medium is just well suited to making tubey, tendrilly things that look like they're floating.
My apologies. I attempted to put forth more content than a mere "here's my stuff". I'm glad you enjoyed Cthulu.
Crash, I beg to differ - the medium is suited for making just about anything! I've seen costumes, Looney Toons characters, spaceships, anything you can think of. The technique that Mr. Hackenwerth is using is known as weaving - it's perfect for making free-form, large-scale sculptures.
One thing though - for these to look good after more than a day or two, he's got to be treating the balloons in some fashion, else the air would diffuse out over time.