Art Basel Miami Beach, has come and gone with several amazing events including the ‘We’ll Make A
Lover Of You’ show curated by Francesco LoCastro and Skywalkers — a mind-blowing art blimp parade — Thursday, December 7th along the white shores of Miami Beach. Skywalkers sprung forth from the imagination of Friends With You, Tury and Sam who were both at the event (Tury is pictured in the gallery), and several other artists including David Choe and Devilrobots. Tury’s grandfather, jazz legend Arturo Sandoval, composed the original musical accompaniment to the parade,
played by the Hialeah High Marching Band. Clay C., one of several voluteer blimp wranglers, documented the event and sent in these beautiful shots. As a thank you, FWY did a limited
edition (200) T-shirt for the volunteer blimp wranglers which is what they are wearing in Clay’s pics. Clay also wrote-up a great report which follows:
"You’ll see a good many ‘setting up’ pictures – I was there from 8am
to help with signing people up, inflating, acting as human ballast,
etc. As of 8 am Thursday, they had 60 blimp-wranglers signed up, but they
needed 150 — by noon — to handle all the pieces, or else we were
gonna have a truncated parade. We did our very best carnival barker
impressions ("Step right up, ladies and gents! Even if you can’t afford
to buy the art, right here, right now, you can become the art !!,"
"Have you got what it takes to be a blimp-wrangler?", etc.), and we
were so obviously having a total blast that we easily recruited another
90 people just from random Beach art fans who wandered by on the sand
(and from the many people who were told "No, you mos def can not have
one of the T-shirts without helping!")
The blimp wranglers comprised a
great crowd – the artists themselves, some decorative models, German
tourists, Japanese art collectors, random Cuban abuelas, street people,
etc. (Some of the models distinctly did not meet the 115-pound minimum
[established in an effort to keep any volunteers from being kited off
to Cuba], but do you think I told them they were not welcome? I may be
ugly, but I’m not stupid!)
One of the sponsors was Scion, and they had a half-dozen customized
Scions leading the parade (and the next afternoon, they auctioned off a
couple dozen one-off 3-foot model Scions ‘customized’ by Baseman, Ron
English, Dalek, etc (Ed: Installation 3 tour). The (full-size) black Scion B in my pics is
customized by Mike Giant, and is being driven by Oriel, a seriously
good guy who was there for Scion, and who worked really hard getting
this madhouse under way. "
Stay tuned to Vinyl Pulse for Clay’s pics of ‘We’ll Make A Lover of You’ in the next couple of days. Also, be sure to click through to the full post for more of his Skywalker pics.
I LOOOOOOOOVE freinds with you!!!!!!!!! OG PLUSH GANGSTAS High rollin in th ebig time!
That is just the best thing ever…fantastic.
wow! that first picture is just amazing!! makes me wana make a massive monster blimp an float it from my house haha!!
Aw, jealous, we need to relocate to Miami! It’s so cold and miserable here in Blighty, lucky we have FWY to cheer our cloudy days. Those scions are nice too, we don’t get those here, just double decker buses.
Oh my god, so beautiful..
I volunteered for this marvelous event. I helped fly Murbit…. that scary looking white rabbit beast.
Just a week later was the opening of Rainbow Valley….. also by friends with you, at the aventura mall.
I was the balloon guy barking all the orders, I wanted to say thank you all for doing such a great job. It was a long day hanging in there. We could not have done this with out you. I HOPE YOU HAD FUN BEING ART !