Catskill Elementary students work on a collaborative creation after a lecture/demo by Hackenwerth’s studio assistant, Leah Blair. (photo by Fawn Potash)
For a while, the Greene County Office Building on Main Street took a thousand balloons, put up and reconfigured by county workers, until worries about latex allergies forced the whole kit and caboodle out after several days of awesome, giggling fun by everyone. The village, looking forward to crowds coming in to see the balloons and other Second Saturday cultural events up and down Main Street on April 12, put up hundreds of its own balloons everywhere.
Photos of the school events, the trucks full of balloons, the theater and storefront configurations in various lights and visitors shooting from within the sculptures started going viral on Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media – all with the blessing of Heckenwerth, who was off to other commissions, and the delight of local artists amazed at both the popularity of what was unfolding and the various questions that it raised about how creations can get recreated these days of tweets, retweets and samplings.
“My work is part of a growing dialogue of artists exploring the possibilities of experiential art” is how the original artist has long described what he does. “Inspired by the iconic sculptures and mobiles of past masters and fueled by curiosity, each of my works is an expression in the evolving language of sculpture.”
This past week, he prepared a newer statement about what Potash has now dubbed “Aviary Reimagined”: “The commonality of the material is so accessible and so easy to understand, instead of people being frightened of the work, as a lot of people are for contemporary art, they seem to be joyous and happy,” Heckenwerth said of what he does and this new idea of refitting it into other locations beyond high-end art institution functions. “We get to reach so many more people. I’m just thrilled and honored that the community of Catskill is so happy to have the worth there.”
This past Saturday, whole families stood and gaped outside the Main Street windows filled with an amorphous floor-to-ceiling octopuslike configuration of thousands of balloons. Back on Bridge Street, where the new theater-owners were also giving tours of their space and plans, bevies of kids bunched inside a big yellow dome of more balloons, while thousands more seemed to cascade down the walls as musician Rob Hervey played didgeridoo space tunes and artists hobnobbed with local politicos and a steady stream of visitors.
Both sites will stay open through Sunday, May 4, when items will be taken from the theater over to a large lot near the County Building, where a Thomas Cole-designed church once stood, for a fun-filled Cinco de Mayo celebration including music, with some events within the balloon sculpture at the theater each of these next two weekends. We’re also hearing (and our sources are good) that some benefit finale’s being planned involving paid opportunities to pop as many balloons as one can in a minute. Talk about a variation on piñatas – and a new way of rethinking all that permanency of art, and final ownership of the creative impulses held within any individual artist’s art pieces. Yet again, a new world seems to have started blooming – or at least ballooning – up in Catskill.
“Aviary: Reimagined” is on display through May 3 at 404 Main Street and the Bridge Street Theatre at 44 West Bridge Street. The former is by window viewing; the theater space will be open Saturdays through May 3 from 12 noon to 4 p.m. or by appointment, with balloon-related readings of The Story of Babar on Saturday, April 19 at 1 p.m., The Pigeon Man on April 26 at 1 p.m. and The Red Balloon on May 3 at 1 p.m. For more information, call (518) 943-3400, visit www.greenearts.org, or follow the hashtag #catskillballoons on Twitter.
