Airigami

As embarrassed as I might be to admit it, I watch the Martha Stewart Show. But honestly, there's not much else on t.v. at 2:00p.m. when I go home for lunch daily other than the soaps. But before I divulge too many detail of my daily turkey sandwich inhalation, I'll tell you about an interesting guest on Martha Stewart yesterday, who happened to be an artist. And I'm sure that many of you have met artists of this type before, however you may not have considered their work pieces of art.

Larry Moss was the guest and he is an Airigami artist: partaking in the art of folding air in specially prepared latex containers.... also known as balloon art! But Larry's work goes way beyond your basic children's party puppy dog. Originally a performance artist, specializing in juggling, Larry became more interested in Airigami. From there it became a full-time job. He still performs for audiences today, but now teaches balloon art and is setting world record for large scale Airigami. In 2000 he set the world record for the largest non-round balloon sculpture in the world. Using 40,781 balloons and using no other materials for structure, a total of 44 people constructed a soccer player that stood over 25 feet tall.

On Martha Stewart yesterday, Larry was promoting his recent project called Balloon Manor. Larry has constructed a 10-room, 10,000-square foot, walk-through haunted house made from 100,000 balloons in hist home base town of Rochester, NY. Anyone can go see Ba loon Manor, and with profits from tickets sales going to Teens Living With Cancer, it's a sure bet.

Even if you can't make it to Rochester, rule of thumb here is, give those heart-shaped balloon creaters some more credit, for art's sake.