The Great Balloon Giveaway is a site-specific public project and
social sculpture.
On Saturday, June 5th, 2010, hundreds of helium-filled latex balloons were
attached to the roof
of the historic Camron-Stanford house on Lake Merritt in Oakland, California.
The balloons were detached and distributed to passersby for free by twenty-five
children from the Chinatown district.
The image of a Victorian-era house lifted by balloons
was inspired by the Pixar movie "Up," though The
Great Balloon Giveaway was immediate, local, urban and serendipitous.
It was also site-specific. The project recontextualized
the history of the Camron-Stanford
House—early residents included David Hewes, who benefitted
from Chinese manual labor—with an act of generosity that marked
the public's circumambulation of Lake Merritt with brightly-colored balloons.
The Great Balloon Giveaway was commissioned for Here
and Now, a series
of three site-specific installations in historic Oakland architecture, curated
by Christian L.
Frock presents Invisible Venue and organized by the Mills
College Art Museum.
A catalog written by Christian L. Frock, with an introduction by Dr. Stephanie
Hanor, is available for download (PDF,
5 MB).
The artist would like to thank: Oakland-based retailer
FLINC, especially Scott
Louie, for t-shirt and screeprinting donations; Trader
Joe's; the City
of Oakland’s Lincoln Square Recreation Center, namely Gilbert
Gong, Tina Huang, and the participating children and families; curator Christian
L. Frock; Mills Art Museum Director Dr. Stephanie Hanor, staff Stacie
Daniels and Lori Chinn, work-study students Nic Buron, Amanda Bailey and
Abby Lebbert and Mills alum Kimi Taira; photographer Paul Kuroda; the Camron-Stanford
House Board of Directors, especially Nestor Bradley, Elaine Oldham
and Neil A. Cook; and the Oakland community
participants.
