The IFAI – The Industrial Fabric Association International – has awarded Pink Powered by Moss – FISH project the highest honors – The IAA Award of Excellence in the category of FABRIC ART 2010!
Description of the FISH project:
-What is the project all about?
We created beautiful Fish for Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival. The producers, Superfly commissioned us to build 6 – 10 foot long lantern Fish to be suspended in trees. The printed bodies show great detail and the internal lighting creates mystery in the evening.
-What was the purpose of this project? What did the client request?
The Client requested Lanterns that looked like Chinese Fish for their Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, an outdoors festival. Outside Lands Concert at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco included the Dave Mathews Band, Pearl Jam and my favorite guest Tom Jones! There were 3-days of music including many bands that I had never heard of before!
The producers, Superfly planned to suspend the giant fish in trees on the concert grounds creating surreal spaces for the festival-goers to explore. The detail on the bodies were to look like a Chinatown Fish Lanterns and our client provided us with flat images.
-In which city, state, and country was the project installed or used?
San Francisco, CA USA
What is unique or complex about the project?
The event came off without a hitch however the challenge of the Fish was to design and create them in the time frame and within budget. There were also a lot of technical issues that we had to solve and solve them we did!
There were several challenges in designing the lightweight fabric structure. The Fish had to be full and round yet travel easily. The printing was also difficult – flat drawings but creating a 3 dimensional shape was quite challenging with the details of the graphic on the form.
We choose to work with a double layer as a solution for both the internal lighting and for the smooth, round structure. The inner form became the skeleton with “bones.” The structure collapsed flat for shipping and a stick is inserted to tension out the form.
A complete printed skin then covered over the whole structure and zipped closed. Each pattern part had to be created first, then the artwork manipulated for printing. After printing each part was carefully matched then sewn together. The surface had to look great in the day and the lighting inside had to look great at night.
-What were the results of this project?
The results were quite magnificent as you can see!
Beautiful weather was in store for all concertgoers and the fish were suspended in trees for beautiful effect!
-Is there any other relevant information that may impact the judges’ decision?
In words this suddenly this all sounds easy but it was really quite a challenging project for us and spandex. The 2 points we discussed – the shape and the prints were incredibly difficult in these materials – in the photos you don’t sense real size – These fabric sculptures really are 10 foot long and 4 foot high. As you know some things look better in pictures and some don’t – as far as this goes these structures really are remarkable in person – the color, the detail, the form and the fun!
Tags: art, Design, fabric printing, fabric sculptures, fun, rental decor
