With one assistant and a hand pump, New York artist Jason Hackenwerth spent a week in early June turning some 7,000 balloons into 13 giant sculptures commissioned for a Chicago event. Seven of them are now hanging from the ceilings at Navta Schulz. His balloon works have been attracting attention at galleries and museums in the last 18 months, but he’s been entertaining kids in restaurants and malls with smaller, more conventional balloon sculptures for years. When he was in high school his mom, a factory worker, started performing as a clown, twisting balloons in a Saint Louis mall. “I would count the money afterwards,” he says, “while she got the makeup off and scarfed down some food so she could get up at 6 AM for her job. The hard part for me was that she was coming home dressed as a clown–as a teenager, that was humiliating.” After entering Webster University as an art major in 1989, he apologized for teasing her and asked to learn the trade. After a while Hackenwerth ditched the clown outfit and went out on his own. For nearly 15 years he supported himself making balloon teddy bears, flowers, ladybug bracelets, and swords. If boys asked for specific things like Spider-Man or a Power Ranger, he says, “I’d offer to make them a ‘superturbo jet pack 3000 with dual thrusters and front handlebar controls’ instead. I’d strap it on them and warn, ‘Don’t bump your head on the moon, and if you flip out at 30,000 feet you’re road pizza.’”
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Earlier this year a Knoll vice president saw Hackenwerth’s balloon sculptures at an event in a New York restaurant codesigned by Mies van der Rohe and asked him to create some works for a private event the furniture company was holding at IIT’s Hermann Hall, also designed by Mies, because they’d make a great contrast with its clean, modernist lines. When Hackenwerth saw the space, he says, “I knew that I wanted to create work there. I loved the enormous windows that go to the ceiling, and the gorgeous view out onto the lawn. It felt like being in a giant aquarium, which suited me very well.” Three of the 13 sculptures Knoll commissioned can still be viewed on campus (call 312-567-3707 to confirm). The school plans to display them until they’ve visibly deflated–or “expired,” as Hackenwerth says, which usually takes several months.
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