Post by spriskeptic on Oct 24, 2006 9:37:46 GMT -5
Well, this is not exactly haunted. Actually it's not haunted at all, but I thought you might want to read about this with it being Halloween season.
A 10-room haunted house from balloons
By BEN DOBBIN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 15 minutes ago
IRONDEQUOIT, N.Y. - In place of clay or wood, sculptor Larry Moss prefers a highly malleable but far less durable material: balloons.
His air-filled models of humans, animals and monsters are playful and a tad spooky at times. And when he teams up with a few dozen balloon-artist friends, their colorful cast haunts unusually elaborate settings.
Moss' latest and most dramatic performance-art oddity is a 10-room, 10,000-square-foot, walk-through haunted house made out of 130,000 latex balloons covering all but the floors and ceilings. It is inhabited by silly, quirky, hilarious and somewhat creepy Halloween creatures.
The elaborately furnished Balloon Manor fills up a wing of the Medley Centre mall in the Rochester suburb of Irondequoit. The one-of-a-kind "boo-loon" show opened Friday and runs through next weekend. That's about as long as the artwork can last — with periodic infusions of air.
The entrance is a dragon's mouth, complete with a giant uvula that tickles visitors around the head. There's a motorized carousel of galloping insects, dragons and vultures, all ridden by undersized skeletons, and a Model T Ford which looks like it's possessed by long ghostly white arms.
In a nearby "beastro," two vampires hang upside down eating off an upturned table, and a ghostly chicken plays the role of "poultry-geist." In the kennel room, cages full of critters are trying to lock horns, claws and fangs through the bars. The crystal ballroom features both flying and disco-dancing skeletons.
The front end of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis has crashed through one of the walls — interlocking gray and black balloons that make the brightly colored characters stand out even more.
More than 50 balloon artists from around the country and as far away as Japan and Israel helped build the manor, all employing their own styles and creative quirks. A little ventriloquism adds a dash of devilry to the odd-looking crow with the quivering lips being carried around on the arm of Sheree Brown-Rosner, a Long Island photographer whose side job is making "magical balloons."
Moss is puzzling over the provenance of a creature that's standing guard in a courtyard where the ivy creepers have eyeballs instead of flowers. Don Caldwell, the exhibition's co-creator, comes by, mulls over the monstrosity, then declares: "I like Tasmanian monkey cat."
The tour-guided show is expected to draw up to 15,000 people and raise as much as $50,000 for a hospital cancer center and the Teens Living with Cancer support group. Moss' wife, Judy Mathers, was left physically disabled by treatments for Hodgkin's disease after their daughter was born three years ago.
Moss, a 36-year-old New York native, is renowned for his large and technically challenging sculptures. He earned an entry in the Guinness Book of Records when he and fellow artist Ryan Sorell constructed two 40-foot-tall soccer players out of 40,781 balloons in Mol, Belgium, in 2000.
"When you say balloon art, so many people think of dogs and cats," he said. "I want to see more people learn how to do this and to build an appreciation for what we do. I want them to know a balloon is my paint brush. If I can visualize it, I can create it.
"All of the different sizes and shapes of balloons can be thrown down on the canvas that I have around me and we're talking about a three-dimensional sculpture form."
Because the air eventually seeps out, balloon art has an ephemeral ingredient.
"When this is all over, what's left is a memory, a picture in everybody's minds. Usually when I talk to people later, they talk so expressively about what they saw — different things than I did.
"My background is as a stage entertainer. I like entertaining the audience and creating something for them that they can't necessarily hold in their hands and take away."
___
On the Web:
www.balloonmanor.com
Read this and other stories at: news.yahoo.com
A 10-room haunted house from balloons
By BEN DOBBIN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 15 minutes ago
IRONDEQUOIT, N.Y. - In place of clay or wood, sculptor Larry Moss prefers a highly malleable but far less durable material: balloons.
His air-filled models of humans, animals and monsters are playful and a tad spooky at times. And when he teams up with a few dozen balloon-artist friends, their colorful cast haunts unusually elaborate settings.
Moss' latest and most dramatic performance-art oddity is a 10-room, 10,000-square-foot, walk-through haunted house made out of 130,000 latex balloons covering all but the floors and ceilings. It is inhabited by silly, quirky, hilarious and somewhat creepy Halloween creatures.
The elaborately furnished Balloon Manor fills up a wing of the Medley Centre mall in the Rochester suburb of Irondequoit. The one-of-a-kind "boo-loon" show opened Friday and runs through next weekend. That's about as long as the artwork can last — with periodic infusions of air.
The entrance is a dragon's mouth, complete with a giant uvula that tickles visitors around the head. There's a motorized carousel of galloping insects, dragons and vultures, all ridden by undersized skeletons, and a Model T Ford which looks like it's possessed by long ghostly white arms.
In a nearby "beastro," two vampires hang upside down eating off an upturned table, and a ghostly chicken plays the role of "poultry-geist." In the kennel room, cages full of critters are trying to lock horns, claws and fangs through the bars. The crystal ballroom features both flying and disco-dancing skeletons.
The front end of Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis has crashed through one of the walls — interlocking gray and black balloons that make the brightly colored characters stand out even more.
More than 50 balloon artists from around the country and as far away as Japan and Israel helped build the manor, all employing their own styles and creative quirks. A little ventriloquism adds a dash of devilry to the odd-looking crow with the quivering lips being carried around on the arm of Sheree Brown-Rosner, a Long Island photographer whose side job is making "magical balloons."
Moss is puzzling over the provenance of a creature that's standing guard in a courtyard where the ivy creepers have eyeballs instead of flowers. Don Caldwell, the exhibition's co-creator, comes by, mulls over the monstrosity, then declares: "I like Tasmanian monkey cat."
The tour-guided show is expected to draw up to 15,000 people and raise as much as $50,000 for a hospital cancer center and the Teens Living with Cancer support group. Moss' wife, Judy Mathers, was left physically disabled by treatments for Hodgkin's disease after their daughter was born three years ago.
Moss, a 36-year-old New York native, is renowned for his large and technically challenging sculptures. He earned an entry in the Guinness Book of Records when he and fellow artist Ryan Sorell constructed two 40-foot-tall soccer players out of 40,781 balloons in Mol, Belgium, in 2000.
"When you say balloon art, so many people think of dogs and cats," he said. "I want to see more people learn how to do this and to build an appreciation for what we do. I want them to know a balloon is my paint brush. If I can visualize it, I can create it.
"All of the different sizes and shapes of balloons can be thrown down on the canvas that I have around me and we're talking about a three-dimensional sculpture form."
Because the air eventually seeps out, balloon art has an ephemeral ingredient.
"When this is all over, what's left is a memory, a picture in everybody's minds. Usually when I talk to people later, they talk so expressively about what they saw — different things than I did.
"My background is as a stage entertainer. I like entertaining the audience and creating something for them that they can't necessarily hold in their hands and take away."
___
On the Web:
www.balloonmanor.com
Read this and other stories at: news.yahoo.com