Planning for DARKMATTER started last year.
It is hard to describe how much goes into planning for creating a sculpture or installation. Its even more mind-boggling when you throw in 32 large painting and two decades of process drawings.
Coming up with the concept for DARKMATTER was the first step and the title seemed to come ready made. The hard part was knowing how big the gallery was and figuring out the scale the works needed to be and how many I needed to have in order to truly fit the space. The second step after concepting, is doing the math and calculating the materials cost. In this case I wasn’t sure if I could even get the materials. During the pandemic, Pioneer Balloon company (the folks who make Qualatex Balloons) stopped production on many of the sizes and colors that are generally the ones I use most. In early 2021 I purchased almost all of the balloons I could get my hands on as my distributor told me they would not be getting anything new in for an unforeseeable amount of time. When January of 2022 came and Pioneer still was not producing the colors I wanted, I called the CEO directly. It was a long shot, but he assured me he’d do what he could to get the balloons I wanted back in the production schedule by the time I needed them. How cool is that. And he made good on his promise. By June he reached out to let me know they had produced the large numbers I needed and he would be ready to ship them in time. wow! In total we ordered more than 20,000 balloons and nearly all of them went into the sculptures for DARKMATTER.
here are some of the process drawings for the show.
It is not unusual for me to scratch out several iterations and make small changes each time until I get the shape and the concept of scale to the point it feels right. For DARKMATTER I think I made a dozen or so drawings. All of them can be seen at Creative Pinellas as part of the exhibit.
