From thin air, 40,000 balloons add up to one giant public art installation

ROCHESTER, N.Y.

I am a twister.

I make balloon animals, doesnt cut it, you see. Right now youre picturing dinky dogs and flowers and swords that youve seen at kids parties and carnivals.

Picture this instead: 40,000 balloons, mimicking the texture of wood on a sinking ship, the gnarled tangle of coral, the whirling tentacles of squid and the flashing fins of fish of all species. Picture balloons of every color and shape, stretching from floor to ceiling, five stories tall.

Thats what twisters can do.

A crew of about 60 twisters assembled here for four days last week. The resulting massive sculpture, known as Balloon Manor, is now on display as public art. You can see it in the Sibley Tower Building in downtown Rochester.

For a few more days, that is. Soon, it will be time to pop the whole thing.

But dont think about that. For now, just gaze at the astounding profusion of balloons.

Under the direction of balloon artists Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle, a crew of balloon twisters built a five-story underwater scene in four days in Rochester, N.Y. (Airigami)

That coral reef is made of a few hundred pink heart-shaped balloons, twisted together four at a time and then tied together with uninflated balloons. Those two masts on the ship started as 420 individual six-inch-long balloons, tied end-to-end in circles of five and stacked about two stories high. Each tentacle of that gargantuan octopus is a complex braided strand of nine balloon threads, each one as thick as my arm.

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From thin air, 40,000 balloons add up to one giant public art installation