New location, New school, New services!

This is just to make sure everyone knows that I am no longer in the east coast, or much in Oakland right now. I've relocated to Blue Lake just a bit to the east of Arcata, CA. All of my larger structures are available with due notice, but I am also offering my services as a birthday party entertainer. I've got balloons for all ages, magic, games, juggling equip, and even some facepainting if that's what you're looking for.

My rates for b-day party entertainment, not including giant balloon sculptures, is $150/hour.


Whoo school year!

Alex Corby
631-379-9221

Prices!

Interested?
e-mail me with what you would like at Spiceyquark@gmail.com
or
call me at 631-379-9221

All my sculptures are the responsibility of the client after purchase. They tend to last in good shape from 2 weeks to a month and will hold their shape for a few months after that. If you're looking for a one time use, I will dispose of them at no extra charge.

Not your average balloon pony

Some people paint glorious masterpieces of scenic hillsides and luscious bowls of fruit with oil and canvas. Others artists mold life-like statues complete with rippling abs into marble with a hammer and chisel. And there are still others who record a cacophony of industrial power tools echoing down a metal shaft for buckets of money at a time. I twist balloons. I never thought I'd find any calling as an artist per se but it seems I have through the medium of balloon art. Laugh if you will but balloon art and balloon sculpting is fast becoming a competitive new medium with hundreds if not thousands of followers.








The Early Days
I first started out balloon twisting as a side project to pay the bills while I sought my fortune in the Circus arts arena. My birthday party mentor gave me a three day tutorial on how to construct your basic balloon sword in under 30 seconds and then how to reproduce that sword for 30 kids at a time. I experimented with a few creative variations but nothing to write home about.

Then, on a trip to Europe I began learning different types of designs more geometrical in nature and less suited for the crank 'em out birthday party scene. It wasn't long before I got curious and started connecting the geometric shapes together creating several colorful balloon nets or snowflakes. The pictures below are of one of my later versions that I created for the Pride festival in San Francisco.

Are you adding a note or a person?

It was only after the festival that I got the idea to fill in the shapes with conventional balloons

Filling in the Gaps
A few months later, a circus I worked with held a fundraiser and asked if I could come up with some balloon decoration for the event. I didn't really know if I could pull off anything interesting enough, but thankfully inspiration struck once again from travels and learning another technique allowing one to fill in the empty space in a sculpture with solid color creating something like balloon fabric. The following designs came to me just experimenting using that technique in conjunction with the spheres I had learned the year before.

At this point I began naming my sculptures and created the four following pieces as a set to hang at said fundraiser. I kept things basic and tried representing the four elements.


Fire

Water

Earth

Air

DNA Strand
At one point, a good friend of mine requested that I find a way to design a colossal balloon sculpture of a DNA molecule. It took me several tries over the course of a very busy year, but I finally came through after gaining confidence with new techniques. The results are below.

Sol
Following the fundraiser I decorated in November, I was approached very quickly to help out with yet another fundraiser being held in December. As the event was right nest to the solstice and considering the event flyer was nothing but red, orange, and yellow swirls, I decided to try a multi-layered by color sun. This was an important project for me as it provided me with a good example of what happens when you make your work too busy. The first series of shots are halfway through the process but have a much more concise and polished look than the finished product.

This is a cross section and, as I saw later, conveniently doubles as a humongous flower

The finished product, though well received, did seem a bit busier than I had hoped. The solar flare arc on top made it easy as cake to hang though.